I wonder what might freight your prayers with more consequence than usual? Pentecost seems to invite exploding the possibilities of what an encounter with God’s spirit might be like — one that will cut through all the stand-ins for the real and expose the truth about us in all its unedited strangeness.
Jesus keeps leaving, and so many other hopes and plans fall apart; the story keeps ending. Every time. And the beginning comes after the end. Every time.
God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. All of us. Each precious created thing that ever was. Every creature. Every stone. Every atom. These are real because they are given. And they are given, because that’s who God is. God gives. God gives life. Always.
You will not lose your way because I am the way. You do not have to go searching for truth because I am the truth. You do not have to fear that life will slip away from you. Because I am the life.
“Our duty as God’s sheep is not to sit idly while God’s protection and love wash over us, or to expect to be carried, but rather to continue walking even if we are in the valley of the shadow of death. It’s to continue listening for the voice of God, even as we witness thieves breaking in and as the voices of strangers grow discordant and loud and drown everything else out.”