Category Archive: Incarnational Reality

• A Sturdy Center

  There is great potential in your life right now, in your neighbor’s life, and in mine too. Whether things are sweet or bitter, we know God is ready to work for our good. The trick is that we have to show up in order to receive the good He wants to work. Whatever the Lord may be doing in our lives, He’s doing it in the place where “Another lives in me.” To have what we need to cooperate with Him, we need to be in that place within ourselves where His Spirit is. I think of it like old-fashioned milking stool — a sturdy spot where I can, as Tommy Briggs would say, “set down inside myself.” Three legs brace this abiding place, and when I get wobbly I check on these practices:

  1. Practicing God’s presence —

  Am I nudging my attention toward my Helper throughout the day, or doing my own thing? Am I thanking and praising Him as I go?

  2. Daily listening prayer — 

  Am I sharing my heart as I actually am right now, and taking time to receive what He wants to impart?

  3. Confessional community — 

  Do my people know where I am and what I’m working through? Am I exposing my sin and vulnerability so they can stand with me in receiving God’s mercy and aid?

  

  These aren’t moralistic “shoulds,” but fundamental human needs, like drinking water and getting to bed at a reasonable time. When we recognize them as needs, this does much to show us the way forward. Rather than making these behaviors a burden of Christian performance, we can ask our Father for daily bread. Know this:  it is His desire to open the way and provide every resource it will take to make your abiding place steady and strong. I’ll challenge you to begin by humbly owning these needs – confess to the Lord that He created you to see Him, to receive His Word, and to be a known and cherished member of His Body without shame. Once we remember He created us for this glorious destiny, and that these are the actions of a fully-alive human person created in His image, we’re better able to trust that He is invested in bringing us there. This clarity enables us to take the next step:  asking Him to meet these needs. 
  

  “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). 

  God is steadfastly, tenaciously committed to the becoming of every person He has created. It kindles our trust, hope, and courage to remember that He has both the will and the power to accomplish our spiritual flourishing, in every season and circumstance. From this view of His character, we can simply ask for what we need, whatever that may be – “Catch my attention with Your presence while I’m at work today.” “Show me the right window in my day for listening prayer.” “Direct me to the men in my church I can invite to form a prayer group.”

  From this foundation of trusting dependence, we can collaborate with God in seeing our needs met. The discipline of practicing God’s presence really does require practice, which means it takes kindness with ourselves, and persistence. It can be challenging to find time and establish a functional daily rhythm for listening prayer. Developing genuine spiritual friendship with a prayer partner and small group may seem like it will require a bona fide miracle. No doubt, building these practices into the structure of our lives is an ongoing project that needs refreshing as we grow and as seasons change. It could be that you find yourself quite unable to consistently do any of these things right now. Wherever you are in relation to these practices, it is a perfectly acceptable starting place. The Good Shepherd is coming for you, because you are an infinitely valued and irreplaceable member of His flock. You are reachable by God’s mercy where you are right now. 

  The Enemy wants us to feel shame for being needy, when in reality knowing that we need, and knowing what we need, are hallmarks of maturity. I find it impressively elegant that any one of us seeking help with these practices ends up making the Church more what she’s meant to be. Have you thought about that? When you cry out to Him for prayer partners, you are throwing your personal energy into His will being done here on earth. You are directly seeking the answer of Jesus’s high priestly prayer, 

  “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:23).

  When you ask and knock, invite and reach out, perhaps most potently when you do so out of desperate need, God moves to call others forward, to know their corresponding need, and grow in their capacity to be His Body together with you. I rejoice over the ways you are agitating for what it takes to steadily abide in Jesus, because the more you do, the more radiant His Body becomes.
  

• Humility of the Saints

  

  Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
  For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
  Colossians 2:6-7, 9-10

  In contrast to the pride of hypocrites is the humility of the saints. To put on Christ is to increase in the understanding of the fallen heart’s condition apart from Him. All the vices are native to the heart of fallen humanity. The greater the knowledge of God’s goodness in the saints’ hearts, the more they know that their very best apart from God is not good enough. They know that such a good degenerates and does not stand the test of time. In choosing to fear God rather than others, they opt for inner integrity, a change from the inside out that ends in fullness of being. [1]

  This humility of the saints is real freedom, a personal integrity grounded in Christ. To recognize what we would be apart from Him — while going on to be built up in — Him saves us from pride. The humble are free and genuine, original saints who can live and love unselfconsciously. Humility energizes us to continue the steep ascent to our glorious destiny, and to care for those who join us on the way.

  PRAYER
  Lord Jesus Christ, we thank You for descending to our lowest lows so that we could be raised to Your highest heights. Give us grace to expose our sin and struggles to You and to those You’ve provided to help us stay true. In Your mercy, deliver us from any empty persona pride would erect. Grant us greater humility, gracious Lord.

  [1] Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer (Grand Rapids, Hamewith Books, 1994), 50.
  Painting: Alexandre Bida, Christ and the Pharisees, 1874.

• Union with the King of glory

  

  Lift up your heads, O gates!
  And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
  that the King of glory may come in.
  Who is this King of glory?
  The Lord, strong and mighty,
  the Lord, mighty in battle!
  Lift up your heads, O gates!
  And lift them up, O ancient doors,
  that the King of glory may come in.
  Who is this King of glory?
  The Lord of hosts,
  he is the King of glory!

  And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

  Psalm 24:7-10, Ephesians 1:22-23

  God keeps us in His holiness (John 17:15) as we remain in obedient subjection to Him (Romans 6:22). We must remain in union with Christ (John 15:4-5, 17:9). But true union with Christ is hardly understood or walked out today. The abysmal rift or chasm between head and heart, acting and being, masculine and feminine, leads many to think that a more or less spiritualized perfectionism is what union with Christ means… Only in union with Him, listening to Him and carrying out His orders, are we holy. Any substitute for this leaves us without the knowledge of ourselves as prideful sinner and well as saint.

  We are all grievously tarred with the same brush. We all have that within us that wants to remain separate, to be holy by keeping the law perfectly. In effect we want to be God. We want to carry Christ’s banner — but in this age of individualism we only want to carry it if it has our name and imprint on it. We want to be in control; we want to bring others to their knees in admiration and submission. This pride is in every human heart. We tip over into evil the moment we forget to confess the tyrant within and acknowledge that our holiness is at every moment Another’s: it is incarnational. [1]

  Observing Christ’s ascension helps us joyfully subject our hearts to His reign. Pride is quieted as we kneel in awe at this finale of His self-giving. His exaltation secures us so completely that we need none of our own. Contemplating Him as enthroned Lord and adoring Him as King of glory makes our hearts true. We needn’t – and indeed can’t – climb one single rung toward heaven on our own. He is our link, and by union with Him we can hope to be faithful subjects. We become His fullness by obeying Him, by living His mission and following HIs commands. Our confidence comes not from checking our own inventory, but because He is strong and mighty. Another lives in me, another lives in you, and He is the King of glory! 

  Prayer
  Our Father, we thank and praise You for giving Your Son, and for seating Him at Your right hand, in glory. We confess that all creation belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, who reigns far above every claim of name or power. Holy God, forgive the prideful movements of our hearts — the wish to make a name for ourselves, to wield our own power. Give us grace to join our voices with the hosts of heaven who worship at your throne. 

  [1] Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer (Grand Rapids, Hamewith Books, 1994), 231.

  Painting:  Rembrandt, 1636, The Ascension, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  Meditation prepared by Sarah Colyn, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

• Jesus lives, and so do we!

  Eastertide is a seven-week feast celebrating Christ’s resurrection. Christ is risen, and this present fact changes everything for those who look with eyes of faith. Observing this season is a transforming practice, one that will help us live out our baptism. Romans 6 shows the real, sacramental link between Easter and baptism — we were buried with Christ by baptism, and can now present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. As one Easter hymn proclaims, Jesus lives, and so do we. [1] Alleluia!

  

  Pressing into our baptisms is an act of will, a choice we must practice. Christ is risen, and we wait for Him to come again. Until He returns we live in bodies and souls, families and communities where sin and death are no longer our master, but are still at work. Jesus has set us free from sin, but we must embrace that freedom. A wise friend of mine was recently reflecting on where she gets stuck:  “I have the impression that I too often forget who I am.” Yes! You must remember your baptism, I must remember mine, and we must help each other live as baptized sons and daughters of God.

  Men and women who fulfill their baptism consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ (Romans 6:11). Jesus calls us to live free of the curse, not granting it power or ceding hope. We wear His robe of righteousness and share in His incorruptibility. Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego image the baptized, fireproof in the hottest furnace. By virtue of baptism, we refuse to let sin reign in our bodies — it no longer has power to make us obey its groveling fear, its impatient rage, its survivalist impulses of contempt, apathy, and indulgence. We are empowered to offer ourselves wholly to God, presenting every aspect of our persons as instruments for righteousness. 

  This is no religious escape into faux perfection. We are transformed, and are continually being transformed. The baptized enjoy a freedom that scandalizes those under the dominion of death. We are fueled by a hope that seems foolhardy to the unconverted. Leanne Payne linked all wholeness to the waters of baptism:  “Every conversion or restoration of the life of God in a soul, every liberation from darkness and despair, … every putting on of the righteousness of Christ” is a fulfilling of baptism. Christ’s cross signifies ”a baptismal, incarnational image of being in Christ, participating in both his death and his rising. It includes the reality of our participation in Christ’s obedience to the Father. These realities, absolutely unique to Christianity, are vital to keep before the mind and heart.” [2]

  May these weeks of Easter be filled with rejoicing, feasting, and hymns of praise to our risen Lord. 

  This joyful Eastertide, away with sin and sadness! 
  Our Lord, the crucified, has filled our hearts with gladness.
  
  My being shall rejoice secure within God’s keeping,
  until the trumpet voice shall wake us from our sleeping.
  
  Death’s waters lost their chill when Jesus crossed the river.
  His love shall reach me still; his mercy is forever.
  
  Had Christ, who once was slain, not burst his three-day prison, our faith would be in vain.
  But now has Christ arisen, arisen, arisen, but now has Christ arisen. [3]

  ---

  [1]  Jesus lives, and so do we, Christian Gellert, 1757.

  [2] Leanne Payne, Heaven’s Calling (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2008), 121.

  [3] This Joyful Eastertide, George Woodward, 1894.

  Painting:  Glorious Mysteries I: The Resurrection of the Lord, St. Elizabeth of Portugal Church, photo credit Fr James Bradley from Southampton, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

• A thrillingly high calling

  

  Like many who love Jesus and His Bride, Fiducia Supplicans* has hit me hard. There’s much I could say about why I’ve wept, fumed, and stared numbly into space as I’ve grappled with what it means for the Church and for this world God loves so greatly. One thing seems most personal and pressing for us in MPC: FS’s confusing vision of pastoral care exposes the Church’s profound need, and the high calling that addresses it.

  Leanne Payne argued that the Church’s greatest need is a profoundly Christian theological anthropology. Distinguished Christian thinkers today agree. Hans Boersma articulates it this way: “Only one thing can prevent this date [when FS was published] from going into history as one of the most tragic dates in the church’s history: it is the conscious and deliberate reconnection of the pastoral and the theological.”ⁱ Charles Chaput observes, “The most urgent challenge that Christians face in today’s world is anthropological: who and what a human being is; whether we have some higher purpose that warrants our special dignity as a species; whether we’re anything more than unusually smart animals who can invent and reinvent ourselves.”ⁱⁱ The Church needs those who can articulate a profoundly Christian vision of human life and show Jesus-seekers the Way in. What a thrillingly high calling.

  When I stepped into leadership of Leanne Payne’s daughter ministry, the first book she encouraged me to read was Heresies.ⁱⁱⁱ Why, as I was answering the call to a ministry devoted to pastoral care, should I begin by studying heresy? I could think of many books that seemed more relevant to pastoral care, but I respected Leanne and so I took her advice. She understood that faithful pastoral care must proceed from faithful theology. It must always be formed by a true answer to the question, “What is God like?”^iv Although I must admit I didn’t make it through all 512 pages, Brown did convince me that that followers of Christ battle heresy — at some points in our history even to death — because heresy is a life and death matter for those who would hear a false gospel. At the same time, the fight against wrong teachings should be waged with a merciful heart toward any person who is so unfortunate as to become the proponent of heresy. Like all things, their failure is God’s servant, because the Spirit guards the Church’s integrity and works through the errors of Her members to refine Her. As both scripture and history prove, God’s people are prone to syncretism and vulnerable to confusion. It is very possible for us to believe we’re ministering in Christ’s name when in fact our offering is more shaped by the gods of progress or sentimentality than the God of scripture. Such corrupted care is cruelest to the most vulnerable among us.

  To consciously and deliberately reconnect the pastoral and theological calls us beyond academic departments and professional guilds. It calls us beyond the mindset of our day. It calls us to dig deeper into the riches of scripture and the wisdom of the saints throughout Christian tradition. Higher still, it calls us to become saints ourselves, courageous and clear enough to be the truth and speak the truth. Pastoral care is always a particular, personal encounter, and so this great need of the Church comes down to a need for persons. Integrated persons — those who wonder and study from the head and heart, those in whom theology and worship form an interwoven fabric. Equipped persons — those who aim high as students of both theology and human experience, and kneel low in exposing their weaknesses in the Body where they can be known and refined. Courageous persons — real disciples who follow Jesus’s total reliance on the Spirit to empower total obedience to the Father. We need such persons in formal and informal roles, ordained and lay, professionals and neighbors. My husband spends his working days as an engineer, and is surprised by how often a younger man on his team asks him for advice on how to be a father. The more grounded we are in the truth of what God is like and what it means to be human, the better we’ll obey the great commission.

  If you’ve read this far, I have what may be a challenging word. I suspect that you are a person who hears this call, and I urge you to answer it. The Enemy is pulling on every thread it can grasp to dissuade you. Words of intimidation, disqualification, and distraction fly like fiery darts, aiming to make you doubt what you hear or feel too ashamed or afraid to answer. These are stalling tactics by a defeated enemy. Don’t let it work. Admit your desire to yourself, to your Father, and to a brother or sister. Listen for your next step of obedience and take it. Rise up and go after the One who is compelling, “Follow Me.” These are dark days, and it’s right to lament FS along with every consequence of our loss of knowledge of the Holy. I’m grateful we can do more than lament, as Gandalf reminds us:

  “‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’”^v

  The key to answering this high calling is to listen to Christ’s voice and obey all He says. He knows what the Father plans to entrust to you, and has a brilliant curriculum mapped out for your learning and maturing in this call. Moment by moment, step by step, day by day, He will lead you faithfully. In case He might be inviting you to some head-and-heart training, I’ll share some of the best we’re aware of.

  Andrew Comiskey and Desert Stream Ministries — I pray that their reach will grow until every community has a Living Waters program. I encourage you to look for a Living Waters group in your area, [https://www.desertstream.org/ find-a-group], or consider their leadership training

  Christopher West and the Theology of the Body Institute — our team has gained much from Christopher’s inspired teaching. I encourage you to attend a TOB course or look into bringing “Made for More” to your community.

  Leanne Payne’s legacy — God has called MPC to build on her legacy in our generations. I’ll make a foolish boast here and include us in this list. I believe that our five-day pastoral care schools are an excellent offering, and our video series makes for fruitful study and prayer in your local community.

  Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world (I John 4:4). Rise up and follow Him.

  *Fiducia Supplicans is a declaration on Catholic doctrine, made in December, that authorizes priests to bless same-sex couples.

  i Hans Boersma, “The Fall of Rome,” Touchstone, 2/2/2024, emphasis added.

  ii Charles Chaput, “The Cost of ‘Making a Mess’,” First Things, 12/22/23, emphasis added.

  iii Harold Brown, Heresies, Hendrickson, 1988.

  iv A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, Harper One, 2009, 4.

  v J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, chapter two.

• Grace for the impossible

  

  By Leanne Payne
  from her newsletter archives, March, 1987

   

  There are a few things in life more comforting than Christian friends who understand what ministry on a fallen planet is all about. Through the years, Carol Kraft (Professor of German, Wheaton College) has sent cards or cartoons that ever after find a place on the wall of my workspace for ready referral when needed. She is a treasured confidant, one in whom I can confide my deepest concerns, for she is not only a true friend, but one who has learned how to listen. She really hears whatever it is I’m struggling to put into words, then has the knack of finding a picture message that either exactly expresses it, or helps me to come to terms with the difficulty. One such card is reproduced below (marked as an original by Desclozeaux to give the proper credit), and it certainly illustrates the miraculous as we Christians so often experience it:

   

  

  Isn’t that wonderful! It would be difficult to find a truer picture of the sheer grace God gives us to not only overcome, but survive the impossible; or one of how this grace is experienced: as we inch, a straight and steady line through a fallen, hostile world to our true home.

  I’m sure there are many of you, who, like myself, are facing the impossible in terms of what God has called you to do and to be. Perhaps calamity, in the form of circumstances so irrational and dark that they could only have been engineered by the powers of darkness, is even now barreling towards you. The blow is calculated to maim or to crush, to stop you right in your tracks. But God’s message to His own is ever the same:  “My power, and the strength that I give you, is sufficient. Call upon it, ask for it, see if I will not cause all grace to abound toward you!” Saint Paul knew and taught with all his might this great truth:  “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (II Cor 9:8)

  The word that Saint Paul uses to describe the grace of God is polupoikilos which means many-colored. William Barkley, commenting on Eph 3:8-13 says that, “The idea in this word is that the grace of God will match with any situation which life may bring us. There is nothing of light or dark, of sunshine or of shadow, for which it is not triumphantly adequate.” No matter what we are struggling with, as ministers, or as suffering persons who desperately need forgiveness and healing, God’s grace is sufficient. Jesus, with implicit faith in the Father, said it all, when He looked directly at his troubled disciples, and said:  “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matt 19:26)

  Reprinted with permission, copyright ©1999-2023 by Leanne Payne Literary Trust

• In Christ I am a Channel of Living Water

  Be blessed by this brief teaching and prayer from Leanne Payne’s archives. To come into Christ’s presence is to be converted, healed, and to become a source of His life for others! By His Spirit, living waters flow up and out of each of us, bringing new life to a thirsty, dying world.

  

  “If any man is thirsty, he can come to me and drink!
  The man who believes in me, as the scripture says,
  will have rivers of living water flowing from his inmost heart.”

  John 7:37 Phillips

• Radiant Lent

  

  The lenten spirit in the Church is one of splendor and delight.
  It breathes with the exhilaration of those girding up to ‘fight the good fight’
  for the One who loves them and has given Himself to them
  for the sake of their salvation.

  hopko, The Lenten spring, 9

  We have these forty days to follow Jesus into the desert. He invites us, calls us, and privileges us to fight for Him in a spiritual adventure. It is a spiritual achievement, one that takes great courage, skill and strength that we have only by His Spirit. In Lent we follow Christ on the radiant path that He has cleared before us.

  We fight for Jesus, cultivating the character and lifestyle that honors Him. We fight against the devil and against our sin nature, refusing the lure of self-protection, self-serving, self-satisfaction, and self-aggrandizement. We fight for the good of our brother and sister, beloved enemy and stranger alike. We’ve been given some powerful and effective weapons that we practice wielding in this season: fasting; immersion in scripture and prayer; openly confessing sin to one another; giving of our personal resources to satisfy the needs of others; and actively loving those who offend or dishonor us.

  Repentance and joy,
  compunction and consolation,
  godly grief and spiritual rejoicing
  are joined together in perfect union in the person who fights for the Lord.

  HOPKO, THE LENTEN SPRING, 15

  Sometimes we follow the wrong guide into the desert, and these distortions of Lent can numb our desire to engage the season. On the one hand, we can turn it into self-improvement therapy, fasting to gain health benefits or changing a bad habit so we like ourselves more. On the other hand, we can punish ourselves with sentimental sorrow and misery as though this self-inflicted pain has some purifying power in itself. Both of these errors drop our gaze to ourselves when the real meaning of Lent comes from the horizon of eternity where glory awaits us.

  I consider that our present sufferings
  are not worth comparing
  with the glory that will be revealed in us.

  Romans 8:18 NIV

  My heart sees truth in Rivière’s painting. Following Jesus to the desert requires humble resolve and a steadiness of will that can only come from Him. It is a rugged place with deep shadows, and we face a real and transforming battle there. Oh, what glory will soon dawn for those who remain with Him!

  Painting: Briton Rivière, 1898, The Temptation in the Wilderness

• The Objective Reality of Beauty

  On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
  and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
  They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,
  and I will declare your greatness.
  They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness
  and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
  Psalm 145:5-7

  It is in loving God, other men, and all creatures for themselves that we begin to partake of their goodness and beauty. Looking at and loving that which is other than ourselves, we begin to “incarnate” it. This is vital to artistic growth, just as it is to spiritual and psychological growth. Alienation in the form of introspection, self-love, enclosure in the circle or sphere of subjectivity is not the way to know oneself; outer-directed interaction with the objectively real is. To know and love God is the beginning of all joy, and it can yield the gift of a divine self-forgetfulness which is the secret of great art. [1]

  

  Beauty is gratuitous, but it is also necessary. By it, God draws us out of ourselves and into His life. Beauty and goodness attract us, and we naturally move into the self-giving dynamic of love. From the simplest act of breathing to the greatest works of our hands, we’re made to participate in God’s creative purposes. Moment by moment, day by day, we become more of what we love, offering the beauty and goodness He is making in us to the display of His splendor.

  PRAYER

  Holy God, Creator God, our Father, we praise Your majesty and beauty. We thank You for disclosing Yourself in all that You make and do. We thank you for this awesome and astonishing world, and for coloring our lives with Your multi-splendored grace. Kindle love in our hearts, great Lover of our souls, that Your holy creativity might flow freely through us. Amen.

  [1] Leanne Payne, The Broken Image (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1981), 92.
  Etching: Wenceslas Hollar, 1607-1677, Creation of the Firmament State 2 [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
  Meditation prepared by Sarah Colyn, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

• MPC Virtual Academy: Deeper Union with Christ

   

   

  These videos provide virtual access to the music, teachings, testimonies, and prayers of all sessions of the 2021 Cedar Springs school. May the Lord anoint them afresh to remove barriers and encourage you in entering a deeper union with Christ, by the work of His Spirit. We would love to hear from you as you attend the school online, so please email us to share your experience or prayer need at any time.

  Videos will be available for unlimited viewing through July 1, 2022.

  Each day of the school is presented in a single video with chapter markers and title screens for each new topic. We encourage you to participate in the sessions in the order presented as each topic will build on the previous sessions. Every session begins with worship singing so that you can lift your heart to the Lord.

  Conference booklet with speaker bios and Eucharist liturgy

  Bibliography of books referenced in each session

  Cedar Springs MPC School Topics

  Video 1
  The Presence of God with Us: The Holiness of God and Incarnational Reality, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  The Presence of God with Us: Practicing the Presence, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  The Presence of God with Us: Obedience and the Vertical Position, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  Removing Barriers to Wholeness: The Virtue of Self-Acceptance, Tommy Briggs
  Removing Barriers to Wholeness: Receiving God’s Forgiveness, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  
  Video 2
  God’s Creative Power: Sense of Being and Well-Being, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  The Disease of Introspection, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  The True Imagination I: God, the Source of Our Being, Gay Barretta
  Hamewith: Our Home Within, A Story of Hope, Jean Holt
  The Virtue of Hope, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  
  Video 3
  Imagery and Symbol: Perceiving God Aright, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  Becoming and Honoring Man, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  Community and Codependence, Jean Holt
  Testimony: Fruitfulness of the Father, Dirk Robinson
  Renouncing Idol Gods and Appropriating the Holy, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  
  Video 4
  Removing Barriers to Wholeness: Forgiving Others, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  Becoming and Honoring Woman, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  Testimony: The Shift from Rightness to Righteousness, Sillimon Davis
  The True Imagination II: Listening Prayer and Receptivity to Reality, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  The Presence of God Within Us: Incarnational Reality and the True Self, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  
  Video 5
  Healing of Memories Prayer, Dr. Sarah Colyn
  Closing Eucharist Service, Fr. Carlos Raines
  
  
  

• A Broad Place

  
  

  Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
  For His mercy endures forever.
  Let those who fear the Lord now say,
  “His mercy endures forever.”
  I called on the Lord in distress;
  The Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.
  Psalm 118: 1, 4-5

  

  The humble acceptance of myself as fallen but now justified by Another who is my righteousness is the basis on which I can accept myself, learn to laugh at myself, be patient with myself. And then, wonder of wonders, be enabled for at least part of the time to forget myself. “Humble yourselves — feeling very insignificant — in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. He will lift you up and make your lives significant” (James 4:10, The Amplified Bible). [1]

  The new year brings a fresh sense of the broad place in which God sets each of His sons and daughters. The way to enter into freedom is on the solid ground of Christ’s righteousness. Because we are in Him, we dare to desire, try, and reach; we find full permission to be and do in Him, with joy! We are released from bent ways of seeking significance and liberated as unselfconscious channels of His mercy. The circumstances of this fallen world can be anything but broad and merciful, be we’re enabled to endure by grace. We entrust ourselves wholly to our Lord and delight in the inner and eternal freedom that He so mightily gives.
  
  PRAYER

  Gracious Father, Your mercy endures forever. You are good and we give You thanks. You, Lord Jesus Christ, are our strength and song. Give us grace to begin this year in the freedom of Your righteousness. Tune our ears to Your voice alone. Pour out Your Spirit, breathing life into our creative desires and giving us freedom to live in joyous response to Your goodness.
  
  
  [1] Leanne Payne, Restoring the Christian Soul through Healing Prayer,  (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1991),  51.
  Painting:  Jacques d’Arthois, 1650, Landscape with Shepherd, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
  Meditation prepared by Sarah Colyn, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

• The Incarnation in You

  
  “For to you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a Baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
  Luke 2:11-12

  God’s love for us is so great that as we wait in His presence, praising Him who is perfect love, He descends anew to and into us, drawing us into Himself. We become incarnate of His love, wisdom, and righteousness. We thereby always have love to give back to Him. In “looking, longing, loving, we become like the One we vision.”[1] This is a built-in incarnational principle. C. S. Lewis puts it this way:

  

  In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down…to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.[2]

  In praise, as in all true prayer and worship, we clothe ourselves anew with the Lord. There is a fresh mantle of His presence. We take on God’s character and take in Christ’s mind. That is, we “put on the New Man” and as a happy corollary we die anew and increasingly to the “Old Man,” which is the old self-in-sinful isolation. In such a union, praise is as natural as breathing.[3]

  The great miracle and hope of the incarnation never fails to amaze us as we gaze at the Christ child in His manger every Christmas. Christ living in us reflects Himself in us today. In “looking, longing, and loving” we become like Christ. Simon, the impulsive, becomes Peter the Rock and Mary Magdalene turns from her sin becoming an ardent follower of Christ. The old-self dies and God’s glory shines though us as we embrace the miracle of the incarnation. As Irenaeus wrote in Against Heresies, “the glory of God is a living man.”
  
  PRAYER

  Holy God, we open our hearts to You this Christmas as we gaze at You in the manger. We are in awe at the miracle of Your incarnation and we long to reflect Your incarnate glory. Awaken in us a great desire to be transformed into Your image and likeness. Quiet our hearts so that we can “become incarnate of Your love, wisdom, and righteousness.” Help us bring Christ and His radiant Heaven-scented presence into Your world this Christmas.
  
  
  [1] John Gaynor Banks, The Master and the Disciple (St. Paul, Macalaster Park Publishing, 1954), 22. 
  [2] C.S. Lewis, Miracles, (London: Collins, 1963), 115
  [3] Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer,  (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1995),  38.
  Painting:  Lorenzo Monaco, 1406-1410, The Nativity, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
  Meditation prepared by Mary Carrington, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

• The Bread of Life

  

  A few months ago, during a time of especially intense ministry, I noticed I was feeling low. The well-known words of Galatians 6:9 came to mind, “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” We might translate “let us not be weary” as, “Don’t let negative influences cause you to become inwardly exhausted.”

  The exegetes say Paul was speaking to himself as well as his brothers and sisters in Galatia, a collective “us.” I’ve felt that “us” in writing this piece. You’ve been on my mind as you seek wholeness and transformation in your inner life and relationships, fighting to persevere when it’s difficult or costly. And I’ve been thinking of you as you work to lead others, care for those in need, and influence the world around you for Christ. At the same time I’ve been deeply aware of my own highs and lows, the gratifying moments when I feel inwardly full and the days when I feel weary. The pandemic we continue to live through seems to create especially acute temptations to weariness.

  We are people who truly desire to live in God’s service. We are not perfectly faithful, but much of the time and in many ways we offer ourselves to Him. We want Him to have His way in us, and we want others to receive their share in the blessedness He so freely offers. We have taken up our cross to follow Jesus, and He gives us the privilege of laboring for His kingdom in ways that involve sacrifice, self-denial, and even dying. Because He commissions us to minister in a world that’s under the influence of sin, there is a risk of weariness, as Paul’s exhortation implies. Following Jesus puts us in contact with negative influences that could, if we face them apart from Him, leave us exhausted and worn. We even carry some negative influences in the unhealed places in our own souls, and we must invite His presence into these places that need more thorough conversion. But following Christ is not an inherently wearying life — rather, we may get confused and go about it in a way that exhausts our inner wellbeing. Fundamentally, taking up our cross and following Christ is a life of joy because our lives are now rooted in the only real source of joy that exists.

  I’d like to look more deeply at what we really think about our lives of service and sacrifice. What do we understand sacrificial self-giving to be? A right understanding of it protects us from weariness while a wrong understanding makes us vulnerable to utter exhaustion and emptiness. God led me into this exploration by showing me something in my own heart. I was dialoging with Him about weariness when a symbol bubbled into my awareness, one I’d picked up decades ago from Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved. Nouwen summarizes his life as a Christian by saying, “I am called to become bread for the world:  bread that is taken, blessed, broken and given” (42). Similarly, Oswald Chambers equates the Christian call to becoming broken bread and poured-out wine. “Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children” (September 30). Many sermons and worship songs draw on this metaphor to symbolize what it means to live in God’s service.

  When this symbol presented itself to give meaning to my weariness, I decided to re-read Nouwen’s book. As I did, I found myself asking the Lord, “Is this a true picture? Am I really the bread with which You feed Your people?” As Leanne Payne wrote, “The imagery really matters” (The Healing Presence, 139). The images we hold in our hearts shape our choices and our very grasp of reality, and if the symbols are distorted, we will be distorted. I could see that my heart had taken in this symbol, but not every picture, story and symbol we take in provides a right and true perception. Certainly, the broken bread picture resonates with our experiences of being spent, exhausted, and consumed. But our own subjective sense of reality may not be a reliable guide. So let us consider whether the image of us becoming bread and wine poured out for others provides our hearts with a true picture of Christian life and service.

  Bread and other symbols

  Let’s begin with the central scriptural symbol of bread, the Bread of Life. Jesus, the incarnate Son of Man, offered Himself in unbroken communion with His Father:  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:51). As Schmemann writes in For the Life of the World, all our hunger from the very beginning was a hunger for Him and all our bread was but a symbol of Him (43). Through His self-giving, the life we lost has been restored to us and we are reconciled to God. I can write these few, simple words, but in doing so I am pointing to a great mystery, and it is because our capacity for understanding is so small in the face of such wonderful mystery that we are given metaphors and symbols. After Jesus told His followers that He would give His flesh for the life of the world, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66). The twelve who continued on with their Lord didn’t profess perfect comprehension of His disclosure, but only confessed that they’d come to believe He is the Holy One of God (John 6:68). As I meditated on this mystery, the Lord pointed out to me that scripture never symbolizes us as bread, and I believe there’s rich, good reason — more than we’ll have space to unpack in this short essay — that this symbol is applied only to the Messiah. Jesus revealed Himself as the Bread of Life, for He alone is the source of all life and the end of all hunger.

  

  Although the Spirit-breathed scriptures never call us bread, we are offered many ennobling and hope-filled symbols of who we are and how God’s love flows in and through us. We are sheep who know His voice and belong to His one flock. We are branches in the true vine, pruned for greater fruitfulness. We become members of Christ, unique and complementary parts of His Body. Something deep in my soul shifts to a better place when, rather than thinking of myself as food for others, I meditate on these whole and living images. Consider that you are a living stone built right into the wall of the house of God, a tree whose roots draw from the cool, fresh steam of living water, and an athlete who is growing stronger through your challenges and trials. These are images of vitality rather than weariness, of inner fullness rather than of exhaustion, and of union rather than separation. 

  Confusion

  Our attraction to the picture of broken bread and poured out wine relates to a theological confusion known as substitution. In substitution, we confuse following the Messiah with being a messiah. We confuse our witnessing cross with Christ’s once-for-all atoning cross. Rather than rejoicing that we are the disciples who get to share the Bread of Life with the hungry crowds, we start to think of ourselves as the Bread. Of course in our rational minds we know we are not saviors or redeemers. But in our intuitive, emotional being, we can slip into supposing that we are somehow given away or consumed so that others might experience healing and redemption. 

  

  This confusion manifests in many subtle ways in our approach to Christian service and what we understand bearing one another’s burdens to mean. At a gut level we may believe being converted means we’re now content to be the one who gets eaten so someone else doesn’t go hungry. The imagery in our hearts may suggest that Christian conversion changes one’s position in the eat-or-be-eaten equation. Perhaps followers of Christ are the meek and docile who no longer chew others up, and instead are ready to be consumed as a remedy for others’ deprivation. I suspect this subtle distortion also confuses our picture of what it means to be long-suffering.

  I would suggest that thinking of ourselves as bread means we’ve unwittingly traded a different story for the gospel which is centered on the death and resurrection of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Our cross is not an atoning cross, and no one is saved by it. Although we will suffer in following Christ, our suffering does not serve as a trade or replacement for any one else’s suffering, not Christ Himself, a loved one, or a stranger. Our cross is a cross of testimony, a witnessing cross, and as we carry it, we are continually transformed. So we can’t be food, but we can be witnesses, and witnesses bring glory to God! 

  Martyrdom & Joy

  In being witnesses, we engage the battle in which the forces of evil attempt to thwart God’s loving and victorious actions in this world. Jesus has commissioned us to baptize others into His new life and make them into disciples. As we do so, we will suffer some of the hatred with which this world reacts to Him. Our witnessing cross can lead to drinking His cup. How essential it is then that we go about our lives of service thoroughly centered in Christ. Our offering of ourselves must be to Him, in Him, through Him, and for Him. If we deputize ourselves as substitute saviors, we’ll be devoured by the very world into which He’s sending us as witnesses. But if we do His works in union with Him, rather than making us weary, any suffering we undergo will have redemptive power.

  This sort of suffering is what Paul is referring to when he says, “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” (Colossians 1:24). The closest thing we find in scripture to the image of us being poured out wine is Paul’s admission that he will soon be poured out like a drink offering. Paul knew his martyrdom was near. The original Greek root of “martyr” means “witness.” Those who are persecuted or put to physical death for their testimony are witnesses to what Christ accomplished on His cross. Whatever we may suffer for His sake brings Him glory because we are witnessing to His offering, urging all to find the answer to their hunger in Him.

  

  The story of the Maccabean martyrs gives us a winsome picture of the joy of witnessing, even when it involves great suffering. During the Greek persecution of Jews in the second century BCE, seven brothers and their mother were arrested. The king demanded that they eat swine’s flesh as a way of renouncing their faithfulness to God. These brothers valiantly refused in the face of cruel torture and death. In this telling of the third brother’s death we hear a joyful witness:

  “When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, and said bravely, “I received these from heaven, and because of His laws I disregard them, and from Him I hope to get them back again.” As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man’s spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing.”  2 Maccabees 7:10-12

  Although this man lived and died before Christ’s incarnation, he demonstrated eucharistic living, entrusting his whole being to God’s triumphant reign. Like him, we joyfully offer ourselves in Christ’s service because His perfect self-offering has freed us to be faithful witnesses. As we follow Him, rather than being made into bread and wine, we become whole men and women who are increasingly able to testify that He is the Bread of life. 

  

  If we embrace the image that God makes us bread to feed His world, the most troubling consequence is what this suggests about God Himself. It implies a zero-sum game in which God must take from one to give to another. It suggests some sort of scarcity in the Kingdom, some need in God’s economy that is met by using up the lives of His children. When we put it this baldly, we know it is untrue. The God of the universe has all He needs, and all we need. In pointing to the joy that Christ’s cross brought to this fallen world, Alexander Schmemann notes that this joy “is pure because it does not depend on anything in this world and is not the reward of anything in us” (For the Life of the World, 55). This gift of joy was made complete through Christ’s sacrifice and is given freely and eternally to all who will receive Him. Our God is the One who says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all its fullness are mine” (Ps 50:12). He neither needs nor desires to spend us. He has plenty to feed His children because He has given of His own life which is infinitely abundant. He is the great I AM, an unfathomable depth and height of love, and as the Father gave His only begotten Son, He poured out grace that is utterly and absolutely sufficient for all.

  You’ve likely heard “The Blessing,” a worship song written in the early days of the pandemic and recorded and shared by community choirs around the world. If you’ve heard it, you’ve likely been moved as the song culminates with the simple but life-changing words, “He is for you.” This truth feeds a hungry place in us, a place where we need divine assurance:  in the morning, in the evening, in your coming, in your going, in your weeping, and rejoicing, He is for you. If we offer ourselves to God, He wonderfully involves us in His redemptive work. He even gives us to one another, but not as food. He gives us whole and the giving makes us more of who we are. As He gives us we remain in Him, and we are not exhausted but rather filled and fulfilled. We are not bread; we are sheep of one flock who know His voice. We are not wine; we are oaks of righteousness. We are given, but never given away. Even as He gives and sends us, we never leave His hand.

  References:

  Chambers, Oswald. My utmost for His highest : selections for the year. Uhlrichsville, Ohio: Barbour & Co, 2000. 

  Jobe, Kari, Elevation Worship, Caries, Cody. “The Blessing.” Graves into Gardens, Provident Label Group, 2020, 4.

  Nouwen, Henri J. Life of the beloved : spiritual living in a secular world. New York: Crossroad, 1992.

  Payne, Leanne. The healing presence: curing the soul through union with Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995.

  Schmemann, Alexander. For the life of the world : sacraments and orthodoxy. Crestwood, N.Y: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973.

  Paintings:

  Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, 1852-1929, The Last Supper.

  Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1311, The Last Supper.

  Rodrigo Fernández, 2015, Jesús multiplica los panes.

  Fra Angelico, 1402-1455, Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saints.

  James Tissot, 1894, La multiplication des pains.

• Pandemic Imagery & Symbol: A Testimony

  INTRODUCTION:

  COVID-19 has altered the gestures and rhythms of life, and while we’re able to cope and adapt, our hearts still register these changes at a deep level. As Leanne Payne observes in The Healing Presence, we are mythical creatures who depend on symbols to bind up reality for us. I’ve recently been pondering how our hearts read the symbols of the pandemic. In many places around the world, we are seeing one another less. And when we are together, it may be behind masks or at a 6-foot distance, possibly forgoing handshakes and hugs. On a conscious level, we understand that these gestures and rhythms are a symbol of care for one another, an accommodation to the reality of the coronavirus expressing our commitment to the well-being of all. But beneath this rational understanding of circumstance, our hearts have a language we’ve spoken all our lives. And in this language, the distance and barriers necessitated by COVID-19 may symbolize the opposite of care.

  In the ordinary lexicon of our hearts, declining to touch or draw near to one another symbolizes a lack of familiarity and intimacy or even ambivalence, aloofness, or rejection. A mask may symbolize illness, vulnerability, or danger (or perhaps highway robbery for big fans of spaghetti westerns). We’re finding new ways to convey a warm hello, offering a big, squinty-eyed smile that is visible around the edges of a mask, keeping our heads turned to the side for a COVID-safe hug, or using words to fill the gap of distanced body-language.

  Through all this complexity, our inner translator is working overtime. Our rational minds can explain the reasons for it all, but that takes repeated, conscious effort. The number of times I’ve had to go back to my car for my face mask before entering a store proves that I haven’t learned these symbols by heart yet. I believe this is one of the factors that’s causing weariness as the pandemic continues.

  There is much more to us than our rational grasp of circumstances. Coping is good, but to embrace life in God’s healing presence we must listen to our hearts and how these symbols are registering deep within us. The gestures and rhythms of the pandemic may be echoing with past experiences where the pain of separation or deprivation of touch and warmth were threatening to the life of the spirit within us. Even the present inhibition of our own reaching out may resonate with earlier times in which the love we were eager to give wasn’t welcomed and received. We needn’t suppress these echoes, because the One who can soothe them and heal the wounds they uncover is near.

  At the peak of my pondering on these matters, I received a beautiful letter from a dear sister in Christ. She was writing to share how God had drawn near to her, working through the pandemic for her good. I was moved and encouraged, and so glad when she gave permission for me to share her story with you. Our merciful and compassionate God truly is nearer to us than we are to ourselves, and stands ready to show us our hearts that we might receive His life more wholly. I pray the Holy Spirit will anoint her story with illuminating, liberating, healing power for you today.

  TESTIMONY:

  As you know, COVID has altered life in many many different ways. It’s been difficult for me to remain resting in God’s peace through the changes and difficulties of life during a pandemic. An issue that is hurting me a lot, but is also being used by the Lord to reveal what is still on my heart, is my deep sense of rejection and the feelings of not belonging, not having a place, not having the right to exist, and being excluded.

  I’ll share the picture of my personal situation: I live alone, a 40 minute train ride from my father’s home. My father is elderly and has leukemia, although he is currently doing well. My single brother lives with him and takes wonderful care of him. My sister has also lived with them for the past year. During the COVID lockdown they have been afraid to get sick and have remained strictly isolated because of my father’s illness and chemotherapy a few months ago as well as my brother’s asthma.  I did not visit or see them for three months. When the quarantine was lifted, I went to see them for the first time since covid, but things had changed.

  I thought I was understanding and accepting, but pain and hurt began to emerge strongly. I felt a bit shocked, for I was not allowed to enter the house (my family home) and hadn’t expected it. I was only allowed to be in a very small terrace they have. I was not allowed to touch anything, and they did not allow me to enter further into the living room or house. I was shocked and hurt, but tried to be understanding and patient. After a few week my father asked his doctor about my coming to see him. I only know this through my sister because my father does not speak much, but he told my father to let me in and not to be afraid of getting sick. So after some time I was allowed to have dinner in the dining room, but just sitting on the chair, right on the spot, don’t move, don’t touch, don’t go around!

  I was and am hurting a lot, more and more. I tried to bear it and brought it all to the Lord. I’ve tried to accept whole situation. But as I realized last Sunday when I burst into tears, pain and anger, I was in fact burying all my emotions and pain inside. Last Sunday I went for lunch with my father and sister (my brother was out that day). It had been two weeks since my last visit as I’ve seen them just a few times. At this visit I exploded.

  You should know that throughout all my life and to the present day, I have been “perfect,” ok, joyful, and without problems in front of my father. I’ve always pretended, wearing a full mask all my life. A tear has never come out of me at home, but I cry rivers and flood of tears in the street and at church. As my real I, my true self is growing, there are things I cannot hide or bear anymore. Last Sunday I burst into tears in front of him, something I think I never did before! I was full of pain, anger, and sadness. The little child, little girl inside me finally came out and poured out all her pain and expressed her anger! Sadly my feelings were and are “forbidden” at home. No wonder I have been in pieces all my life. I expressed my pain to him and said I was hurting, that I felt like a leper, excluded and not belonging. I felt their way of relating toward me was out of proportion (I could give more details about this) and I was hurting. I said I wondered whether to come back, or what I should do. My father despised my feelings and told me to “stop being dramatic.” He said that if I felt not to come back during this situation of social distance, “then don’t come!” It was painful.

  Afterwards, once I was at home and bringing all to the Lord in prayer, I felt strong shame. The Lord showed me how I was confusing the present situation with my deep wounds that this situation brought to the surface. The Lord brought light to what happened. I felt so ashamed, for I could see that little girl crying, demanding to belong, to have a right to exist, to be, to be accepted. I saw my immaturity in dealing with the present situation. I believe a mature way to act and speak would be to express my thoughts and feelings in dialog with them, to listen to their fear and feelings, and try to reach a place of agreement where their fears are taken into account, but my feelings have also a place. Instead I repressed it all inside myself and related to them in the immature way I had usually done. I sense the Lord wants me to grow, to mature, to not react to present situations and difficulties, but live from my true center instead of from the hurting child. I still do not know how to do this, but I believe growth and blessing will come. I ask for prayer for this.

  I also realized that when I was child in my home there was no place for feelings, I had no right to be, and couldn’t be vulnerable. On Sunday I really was despised and ridiculed for expressing my pain and feelings. I expressed them correctly, not in a way that was extreme or out of order. But I believe most importantly that the Lord revealed to me what is still in my heart, blocking my becoming: the deep sense of rejection. I began to put into words and to write concretely and bluntly what I felt and thought: “I have no place; I don’t belong; in my father’s house I am rejected; there is no place for me; I am an outcast.” It was painful, but a grace. For at the same time that I felt strong shame as I tried to digest it all and pray over it, in me there also was, and is, a small, soft song of victory, shy but real. For for the first time, I dared to speak out and express my feeling, and in the midst of the pain something in me had been released.

  In prayer, trying to receive from the Lord, I see He is not asking me to change my family, though I can speak my opinion and act accordingly. Rather, He is building my sense of being and well being, my identity and belonging in Him, in the Father, who affirms me and has a place for me in His heart. He asks me to bring all my pain, hurting, and the lies that are still in my heart about who I am to Christ on the Cross, and to receive from Him. Secondly, I am also learning to communicate, to be, to relate to others from my true center, my real self, so that circumstances and the attitudes of others, whatever may happen, do not break or crush me.

  I am in this process right now. I do not know how to do it and I have fear about when I will go to my father’s house, but I turn to God. I can testify how many blessings He is giving me through this difficult time we are all in. I can’t thank God enough for the grace of knowing at a heart level that He truly is my Father, and is daily present in my life. I thank Him for the grace of practicing God’s Presence more and more. The Spirit really does remind me that Another is in me!  At the same time, He really is breaking all my schemas, at all levels. And often, almost always, I feel so weak, so needy, so blind. It is so hard to let go, so hard to let Him “undragon” me. My heart feels the need to share this, and as I share and give testimony more grace and light comes upon me, it becomes more solid.

   

  Paintings:  J Rossakiewicz, 1989, The Last Supper; William Holman Hunt, 1827-1910, Light of the World [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

   

• With Us In Suffering

  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
  and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
  when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
  Isaiah 43:2

  God’s children are sometimes the most bitterly tried. For them the fires are heated seven times; they suffer, not only at the hand of man, but the heavens seem as brass to their cries and tears. The enemy of souls has reason to challenge them with the taunt, “Where is now your God?” You and I have perhaps been in this plight. We have said, “Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?” [1]

  The matter of suffering is seldom dealt with today in such a way as to help us either understand or undergo it. Some of the popular drivel we hear seems almost to deny that the Christian does suffer….This is one more example of the modern’s estrangement from his own soul. [2]

  The Christian does suffer, but we can lean into the heart of a loving, compassionate, and merciful God, walking through suffering with Him. Many of us are currently suffering from anxiety and fear and other negative emotions as we experience suffering from the Covid crisis but we can trust that God will help us. When we suffer, the enemy of our souls taunts us with the thought that God has forsaken us but this is far from the truth. We may think that God has forgotten to help us, but our loving, gracious God always holds us in His attention and care.

  PRAYER

  Lord, we acknowledge the reality of suffering. Remind us of Your love and comfort when we endure suffering. Reassure us that You are with us and walk through the fires with us. Let us fervently believe that You will never leave us or forsake us even in the greatest suffering we endure. Thank You that we are always held by Your gracious and loving arms and that we need not fear.

  [1] F.B. Meyer, Our Daily Walk (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1982, March 21.
  [2] Leanne Payne, The Healing Presence (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1995), p. 207.
  Painting: Simeon Solomon, 1863, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

  Meditation prepared by Mary Carrington, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

• In the boat with Jesus through the COVID-19 storm

  by Sarah Colyn

  “As long as we dwell in time, there will never be more of Him available to us than now.  Our walk with Him, our acknowledgement of Him with us, within us, while remaining fully sovereign – all this in the now – is what faith apprehends.  God is available to us; Jesus is indeed, if we are born again of His Spirit, the living Fountain within.” [1]

  What does it look like to know that God is fully, really with us, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic? How do we partake of that living fountain within when things around us are disruptive and disorienting? Through His multi-splendored grace, God provides transforming and redemptive practices. As we engage these practices, I am confident we will not just make it through, but will actually know the joy of God’s creative power at work in us and through us right in COVID-19’s midst.

  Practicing the Presence

  The relentless news cycle and growing list of changes to our daily activities can crowd our field of vision. Tuning into God’s presence is a moment-by-moment practice, and the tempter will exploit the intensity of these circumstances to pull our hearts away from awareness of Emmanuel. When we forget to stay our imaginations on Him, we slide into a sense that there is less of God available and that we’re on our own to contend with the circumstances of this virus. When we remember, we are kept in perfect peace, a truly supernatural grace!

In these days the practice of His presence may be more challenging,
  like when an athlete adds heavier weights to their workout routine. A more strenuous workout leads to stronger muscles, so let us take heart. We may fail at times, but failure is part of any worthwhile practice. When we realize we’ve forgotten, that’s our chance to begin again, thanking God for His grace.

  This pandemic gives us a fresh reason to endeavor to keep our eyes on the Lord.  By focusing on Him, we will remain well connected to the source of all assurance and wisdom. If at any point we shift our gaze from His face to the stormy seas, we can always repent and cry out for rescue. He stands ready to deliver us from preoccupation with the things of this world and restore to us the joy of our salvation. Let’s remember too that He has given His Spirit who lives within us. He will grant the grace we need, from the inside-out. We can partake of Christ’s own peace, courage, hope, and whatever else we need of Him, in every present moment.

  Living at the Cross

  The shifting landscape caused by this pandemic stirs primitive reactions in all of us. Our reactions vary — some of us are prone to inordinate fear, others to criticism and blame, others to denial, and so on. Although not sinful in themselves, some of our gut reactions arise from the old man rather than the new and can therefore easily lead us to sin. It is good to admit that we still fall under the influence of that old survivalist within, the one who can’t and won’t rest in God’s peace. If we ignore our fallibility, we will be tempted to take our subjective reactions as objective fact. When we stray from humility, we authorize our hostile, paranoid, and judgmental tendencies and will lack charity.  We will likely have the greatest difficulty with those whose primitive reactions rub ours the wrong way, and can be quick to see the old man in others while unaware that he’s rising up in us.

  This struggle between our old way and Christ’s way is not one we can manage alone. Let’s kneel at the cross regularly, inviting the Spirit to search our hearts. Where He illuminates resentment or villainization of others, we can yield these grievous reactions to our crucified Lord. Where a critical or intolerant spirit is mounting in us, we can ask for grace to see as God sees and receive an infusion of agape love. Where we discern error in others’ choices, we can let this awareness move us into loving and fruitful intercession.

  One way God works all things for our good is by using all things to refine us in character. The circumstances created by the pandemic may give us access to areas of woundedness or immaturity that go undetected in more comfortable times. Living at the cross allows us to humbly observe the content of our emotions and thoughts and share them with the Lord in prayer. Bringing our reactions to the cross will not only save us from sin, but will yield healing and growth as we exchange old ways of surviving for new wholeness in Christ.

  Partaking of Well-Being

  It is God’s desire that every person He’s created have fullness of life. Well-being is His will for us, and we serve His will when we “live loved.” We know that God’s will is not always done in this world, and suffering and deprivation touch every life. So we bear these experiences in hope when we must (more on that later), but we are not to resign ourselves to misery during this pandemic or at any time. We can ask God for inspiration on how to find joy and live creatively amidst whatever limitations the virus brings about.

  We can watch our “diet” and feed our imaginations with the true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent. I can’t imagine a better time to read great stories to ourselves and our loved ones. If we notice that we’re descending into a dreary and unmotivated mood, we should reach out. Some of the best sustenance comes when we give the very thing we’re needing, whether it’s offering someone our attention, extending a well-washed helping hand, or inviting a friend to a time of play or creativity.
  Uncertainty is hard on us humans — we were created for unbroken relationship with an unchanging God. Because worrying thoughts can trouble us most at night, practicing good sleep hygiene is important in these unfamiliar days. I recommend these habits to honor the way God created us for restoring sleep:  keep a consistent bedtime and waking schedule; get exercise and sunlight during the day; avoid caffeine, alcohol, or large meals close to bedtime; minimize screen use before bed; make your bedroom cozy (quiet, dark, relaxing, a good temperature, and screen-free); and pray the examen or compline before bed, allowing God to clear your mind and prepare your body and soul for peaceful sleep.

  If we’re developing symptoms of depression or anxiety, we should seek support early to help us stay emotionally healthy. Pastors and counselors are continuing to provide care, using technology in circumstances where face-to-face meetings are not advised. Religious posturing that erects a false front of pseudo-strength, -faith, or -joy hurts the poser and all around them. God has taken on our flesh and knows our frailty. He has walked this earth with us and has great compassion for what it’s like to live amidst viruses, economic strain, and communal anxiety. Union with Him protects us from the vice grip of pride and shame, keeping us free to cry for help to Him and to His body whenever we need it.

  Practicing Prudence

  The prudent person sees the reality of a situation and takes right actions that match reality. Incarnational reality means that we aren’t on our own to acquire virtue but can ask God to grow prudence in us. Prudence has two key components, comprehending and acting, and we can look to God to aid us in both. In terms of comprehending, God will guide so that we see what we need to know about the reality of our circumstances. Yes, we want to be informed, but not obsessed, and so we should seek discernment about which and how much information to consume. TV news channels make a poor companion at times like this and we need to guard against a foolish or anxious fixation on the news.

  Prudence also involves readiness to act, obeying the command we understand God to be speaking, to the best we know. Christian obedience requires submission as well as courage. In cooperating with the guidance of those in leadership, or in letting go of activities and liberties for the sake of the common good, we are submitting to God and the reality He has permitted. In times like this, God also calls believers to sacrificial actions so that He can love His world through us. The prudent are free to obey promptly and courageously, confident not in themselves but in the One in whom we live, move, and have our being.

  Reaching Out

  The antidote to anxiety and introspection is to engage with the awesome world God has shared with us. The world, flesh, and devil may conspire to turn us in on ourselves, but there is so much lovely and amazing otherness that is untouched by COVID-19. Social distancing may change how we reach out, but doesn’t cut us off from the beauty and wonder of creation. Dirt and growing things are always good for us, and I foresee many countertop, porch-step and backyard gardens will be sprouting in the weeks ahead. Our fellow human beings are the crown of creation, and we will remain free to enjoy and be amazed by one another throughout this season. Beholding, enjoying, and blessing one another is a gift we can unwrap every day. Dr. Clyde Kilby recommended this resolution for mental health:  “I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their ‘divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic’ existence.”

  In our concern for those suffering around us, many of us have a longing to “do something,” a godly urge to serve, help, and care for others. Union with Christ holds us in a collaborative posture with the Lord, saving us from doing for the sake of doing. We can quiet our activistic impulses, taking time to wait, listen, and invite the God who gave His only, beloved Son to love His world through us. We can be confident He is eager to do so, for any true desire in our hearts surely had its origin in God’s own heart. If we will offer our desires to Him, we can trust that He will open up the path before us. We will be surprised and delighted by how He involves us in His loving initiative. No doubt, many testimonies will emerge through this pandemic of God loving His world through His people, and many more acts of love and service will escape the notice of man but bring much glory to God.

  Celebrating Communion

  This is a good time to remember the spiritual nature of Christian fellowship. The communion of saints is an awesome reality, always true but especially meaningful during times of physical separation. When any one of us is praying, singing, or reading scriptures, ours is never a lone voice. Our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world are worshipping too, not to mention the heavenly host before the very throne of God. These days I am singing a peppy doxology while I wash my hands, and it is so lovely to know that I am joining a song being lifted by so many tongues in so many lands. Union with Christ is a real thing, and our spiritual health benefits when we contemplate our membership in His body.

  Remembering that we are part of a whole fabric of relationship can also inspire us in prayer. In these days it is especially important that we pray for civic, healthcare, and Church leaders. We are called to stand in prayer alongside every person who God has placed in a position of leadership. We may never know all of what God accomplishes through our prayers, but we know that prayer is how we bear with one another and participate in God’s faithfulness to His people.  Intercessory prayer is a powerful antidote to loneliness because it shifts our attention from ourselves and engages us in real communion with God and those we are lifting to Him in prayer.

  Hoping in Heaven

  Incarnational reality (the good news that God is with us and within us) is no health-and-wealth gospel. To the contrary, knowing that God is with and within us enables us to hope-fully live amongst, and even suffer through, the worst realities of this fallen world. We see much of God’s goodness here in this life, but we also taste the bitter cup, and we are able to endure because we know the real prize awaits us at the end of the race. Christian hope is truly a supernatural virtue, one we need for ourselves and to have enough to share with others around us.

  Let’s remember that we’re on a journey of becoming, and that our God is eager to use all of these circumstances to transform us from glory to glory. We are in the blessed season of Lent, a key time of renewal in the Christian year. In his essay Great Lent:  A School Of Repentance, Father Alexander Schmemann notes that we participate in Lent by pursuing a change of life. It seems to me that the situation created by the spread of the virus invites us more deeply into this Lenten pursuit. Here’s how Fr Schmemann describes it:

  And, last but not least: there must be an effort and a decision to slow down our life, to put in as much quiet, silence, contemplation, meditation. Radio, TV, newspapers, social gatherings—all these things, however excellent and profitable in themselves, must be cut down to a real minimum. Not because they are bad, but because we have something more important to do, and it is impossible to do without a change of life, without some degree of concentration and discipline. Lent is the time when we re-evaluate our life in the light of our faith, and this requires a very real effort and discipline. Christ says that a narrow path leads to the kingdom of God and we must make our life as narrow as possible. At first the natural and selfish man in us revolts against these limitations. He wants his usual “easy life” with all its pleasures and relaxations. But once we have tasted of such spiritual effort, once we have made by it one step towards God, the reward is great! We discover a joy that cannot be compared to any other joy. We discover the reality of the spiritual world in us. We begin to understand what St. Paul meant by “the joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.” God Himself enters our soul: and it is this wonderful coming that constitutes the ultimate end of Lent:

  “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.” (John 14:23)

  Let us make this Lent a real Lent!

  I say amen to Fr Schemann’s exhortation. And for us today I would add this, as strange as it may sound:  let us make this pandemic a fruitful pandemic. Let us press in to incarnational reality. As long as we live in this world, there will never be more of God available to us than there is right now!

  [1] Leanne Payne, Real Presence (Grand Rapids, Hamewith Books, 1995), 72.
  [2] Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: A School of Repentance (originally published by Department Of Religious Education Orthodox Church In America, 1970, now public domain, gutenberg.org), 14-15.

  Paintings, all via Wikimedia Commons:
  Jacopo Tintoretto, 1575, Christ at the Sea of Galilee
  Meister der Schule von Nowgorod, 1360, Crucifixion
  Rodrigo Fernández, 2015, Jesus multiplies the loaves
  Jean-Paul Haag, 1906, Little gardener sniffs flowers
  Sergey Vinogradov, 1938, Pilgrims

• Divine Humbling

  All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
  baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:
  and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
  Matthew 28:18–20, KJV

  The “all power” is in such contrast to the poverty and humility He knew as the divine Son who “laid aside His glory” and “emptied Himself.” His state of vulnerability never once veered but rather culminated in the cross and His full sacrifice for our sin. And Paul says that we should imitate Christ’s humility, even that our attitude should be as His:

  Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6–11)

  The immensity of who we worship, and who we become—real persons—sons and daughters of God by adoption into Christ, prepares us to look at the divine humbling and the incredible scriptural mandate to imitate it. [1]

  In Jesus we find the ultimate Someone — so solid, so real, unswervingly entrusting Himself to His Father’s love. The gospel stirs our hearts with His dignity and faithfulness, and gives us the amazing news that we’ve been made to become like Him! We seek healing so that we can imitate Christ. His peace can ground us enough that we lay down our self-protections. His healing can integrate the divided heart so that we become servants of God’s will in this world. He gives us His life so that we can share in the glory of humility. 

  PRAYER:

  Fairest Lord Jesus, thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for being the Way. Thank you for countering all the power-grabbing, prideful pictures of power with the awesome reality of Your self-giving love. Lord we want to follow You, we want to abide in You, we want to please You, but on our own we cannot. We believe our lives are hid with You in God, but help our unbelief. Set Your unbreakable trust in the Father into our hearts. Cleanse us, heal us, and raise us up that we might know more of the joy of imitating Your humility.

   

  [1] Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer (Grand Rapids, Hamewith Books, 1994), 44.
  Painting:  R. van der Weyden, 1435, Deposition [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
  Meditation prepared by Sarah Colyn, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

• The Secure Link of Incarnation

  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,
  who is in you, whom you have received from God?
  You are not your own;
  you were bought at a price.
  I Corinthians 6:19-20a NIV

  All afternoon we cried out to God, and there were terrible moments when I wondered what I would do if God failed to help me, if I would simply have to cry out like this the rest of my life.  

  Then suddenly my pleading was interrupted by an amazing awareness of Christ in me.  From that center where He and I were mysteriously one, I extended forgiveness to my enemy.  At that same moment, I was delivered out of the grip of the worst temptation I’d ever known… 

  …Christ in me was securely linking me to God the Father in all His sovereignty and to all else in highest heaven, above and beyond me.  That incarnational link had been the reality through this whole terrible time.

  Had I learned to acknowledge and celebrate God’s immanence as well as His sovereignty, I would have prayed more effectively, and from a much quieter, less frantic place.  I would have been secure in the knowledge that Christ was closer to me than any human being could ever be; He was with me in this warfare…. [1]

  Advent calls us to meditate on God’s immanence:  He is really present and operating within this world and within our beings.  It is all too easy to live, work, and even pray as though He’s far away, and so we need this annual pilgrimage to attune our hearts to Emmanuel.  The reality that our God is with us, even in the terrible moments, enables us to live with supernatural hope and peace.  

  PRAYER:

  Lord Jesus, pour out Your Spirit on our Advent worship and spiritual disciplines.  Thank You for the now of Your presence; grant us Your mighty, untapped treasures as we wait for the not yet of Your fulfilled kingdom.  Use this Advent season to bring us to a more secure union in You, and create an overflow of hope and peace for our families, churches, and communities.  

  [1] Leanne Payne, Heaven’s Calling (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2008), 100-101.
  Photograph:  Liesel, Adventskranz [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
  Meditation prepared by Sarah Colyn, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

• The Gospel According to Christ

  See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit,
  according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world,
  and not according to Christ.
  For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
  and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
  Colossians 2:8-10

  I sadly watched… neognostic spirituality penetrate and destroy the larger part of Catholic and Anglican renewal, together with that within the older Protestant denominations.  Now it is flooding into the evangelical world. It is characterized by an absence of true learning — the good of reason that attends wisdom from the Spirit. And it always reconciles good and evil.  It assigns innocence to sin and sinful behavior — calling it good.

  Many who control church organizations today have fallen into the trap of neognosticism.  They are busy not only publishing this new “gospel” to all who will listen, but because they are in authority they are enforcing their views as “politically correct” — a new “law.”  They are often heard or read today as “Christian” speakers, teachers, and writers. Such is the final result of our egoistic subjectivism and the loss of the Unseen Real. [1]

  Not every teacher who borrows Christian vocabulary is leading us to Christ.  So how do we resist having our minds changed, our consciences captivated by the confusion?  Only through Jesus, who still is the way, the truth, and the life. Turns out, “Keep your head on straight” is profound advice.  Devotion to Christ gives us His mind and discernment, and keeps us in fellowship with others who are after the same prize. When we stand up straight under our living Head, we can effectively love His Church as He does, pray for her off-track influencers, and seek freedom for our brothers and sisters who’ve been taken captive.  

  PRAYER:

  Lord Jesus Christ, You are the head of all rule and authority, and we thank you for taking us into Your body through Your cross.  Rule in our minds. Give us discernment that is free from paranoia. Give us love for Your truth that is free from hostility. Show us any teaching we’ve absorbed that lures us away from devotion to You.  Have mercy on Your Church Lord, expose the schemes of the Deceiver, and deliver those who are imprisoned and separated from You.

   

  [1] Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer (Grand Rapids, Hamewith Books, 1994), 216-217.
  Icon:  Christ Pantocrator from Church of the Paster Noster [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
  Meditation prepared by Sarah Colyn, drawing on the writings and ministry of Leanne Payne.

   

   

• A Civil Society

  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
  that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
  which is your reasonable service.
  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
  that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
  Romans 12:2 NKJV

  When we hear educators or politicians pleading for the restoration of Christian values in the universities or in government, we know their calls are nearly useless because there can be no counteracting trend until the populace itself is converted… Therefore, our hope is not in calling for our systems to be Christian, but in becoming truly Christian ourselves. [1] 

  A pro-Christ trend in our nations can never be imposed top-down — it will only come from the inside-out, one believer, one household at a time.  Our societies will only remain free by having citizens who are inwardly governed by the loving will of God.   We serve society when we withdraw into our gardens of solitude, where we are being steadily transformed into the likeness of Christ.  We bring help to this world when we let Him send us out to winsomely appeal to those around us to be converted too. We are members of the most potent grassroots movement this world will ever know: the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

  PRAYER

  Lord Jesus, we praise You as the King of history and confess that you are King of our time and of our nations.  Forgive us for following the lead of any worldly influence; bring the perfect clarity of Your truth into any confusion.  Forgive us for any way we’ve been looking to the government or our civic institutions to rescue us rather than courageously following You.  Cleanse our hearts of anxiety, hopelessness, and unbelief, for we do believe You are faithful. Pour out Your Spirit upon us. Unleash Your Kingdom within us and among us.  Renew our minds, make our wills one with Yours, and empower us to invite others into this blessed life of transformation in You.

   

  [1] Leanne Payne, Real Presence (Grand Rapids, Hamewith Books, 1995), 53
  Illustration:  Limbourg brothers, 1416, The Apostles Going Forth to Preach from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
  Meditation prepared by Sarah Colyn, drawing on  the writings and ministry of  Leanne Payne.