Chapter 9 - Adoration

Chapter 9 introduced us to 7 scripture passages to help us understand the Biblical view of adoration (with my personally assigned title for each passage):

• Deuteronomy 6: 4-25 (Remember God in everything)
• Isaiah 43: 1-13 (Knowledge instills adoration)
• Genesis 1: 1-31, 2: 1-3 (Adoration inevitably follows creation)
• I Peter 1: 3-9 (Adoration developed by faith)
• Job 38: 1-33, 42: 1-6 (A focus on God brings adoration)
• Revelation 21: 1-7 (Unavoidable adoration)
• Luke 1: 46-55 (Mary’s song of adoration)

The hymn for the week was "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” by Henry Van Dyke. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Edward J. Farrell, Albert E. Day, A. W. Tozer, Annie Dillard, Kenneth Leech, Martin E. Marty, C. Fitzsimons Allison, Philip S. Watson (in a compilation from The Message of the Wesleys) and Frederick Buechner. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

· “Thus ‘adoration’ in its religious and original sense – the bowing down in awe and reverence, tinged with the fear of God – has become largely lost in superficial wonder and feeling.”
· “We never really adore Him, until we arrive at the moment when we worship Him for what He is in Himself, apart from any consideration of the impact of His Divine Selfhood upon our desires and our welfare. Then we love Him for Himself alone. Then we adore Him…”
· “There is a place in the religious experience where we love God for Himself alone… If this should seem too mystical, too unreal, we offer no proof and make no effort to defend our position. This can only be understood by those who have experienced it.”
· “ ‘Religion is adoration’ wrote Von Hugel. As in meditation, adoring prayer calls for a concentration. But it is not a fierce mental concentration so much as a focusing of our love, an outpouring of wonder toward God.”
· “Rabbi Zalman said of the Lord: ‘I don’t want your paradise, I do not want your coming world. I want you, and you only.’ …The ancient Hebrew loved God for the sake of a long life in which to enjoy creation, but he also was to love the Lord for the Lord’s sake. …A believer shifts away from a bartering concept in which one loves God for the sake of a transaction. Now there is a relation in which the trusting one is simply reposed in the divine will.”
· “The silent treatment is an extremely powerful weapon of aggression.”
· “Your life is continued to you upon earth for no other purpose than this, that you may know, love and serve God on earth, and enjoy him to all eternity.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 9 not quoted) mean to you? I look forward to your responses.

John

Chapter 8 - Silence

Chapter 8 cited 7 scripture passages to focus on the value of silence as a help in our ability to hear what God may be trying to say to us (with my personally assigned title for each passage):

Revelation 3: 20-22 (Listening enables hearing).
James 3: 1-12 (Guard the tongue).
Ecclesiastes 5: 1-3 (Listening beats talking).
I Kings 19: 9-13 (The still, small voice).
Psalm 46 (Be still to know God’s presence).
John 10: 1-15 (Knowing the Shepherd’s voice).
Habakkuk 2: 20 (Silence in God’s presence).

The hymn for the week was "Still, Still with Thee” by Harriet Beecher Stowe. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Tilden H. Edwards, M. Basil Pennington, Dom Helder Camara, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John White, Richard J. Foster, Susan Annette Muto, Thomas R. Kelly, Thomas Merton, Anthony Padovano and Henri J. Nouwen. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “…the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love…begins with silence.”
• “…the grace You grant me of silence without loneliness, …to clamour for my brothers imprisoned in a loneliness without silence!”
• “Silence is the very presence of God – always there. But activity hides it. We need to leave activity long enough to discover the Presence – then we can return to activity with it.”
• “…the religion instructor at a Christian high school decided to introduce silent meditation into one of his classes. He gave the students instructions simply to ‘be’ during the silence: to be relaxed and awake, open to life as it is, with nothing to do but appreciate whatever comes. Week by week he slowly increased the amount of time to a maximum of ten minutes. …One boy summarized the general feeling of the class: ‘It is the only time in my day when I am not expected to achieve something’.”
• “The Word comes not to the chatterer but to him that holds his tongue. The stillness of the temple is the sign of the holy presence of God in His Word. …Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. …Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. …(It) is something that needs to be practiced and learned. Real silence, real stillness, …comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness.”
• “(God) is more anxious to speak to us than we are to hear him.”
• “The disciplined person is the person who can do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.”
• “Silence can be an escape… But it can also be an opening to God.”
• “Silence becomes like a creative space in which we regain perspective on the whole.”
• “We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them… .”
• “ ‘Father’ sometimes becomes the only word silence allows as we express inexpressibly all we feel and want and reach for.”
• “…silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive. …Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 8 not quoted) mean to you? I look forward to your responses.

John

Chapter 7 - Making Moments

Chapter 7 used the 7 scripture passages to illustrate the kind of moments that may seem mundane at the time but then can become seared in our memories (with my personally assigned title for each passage):

Luke 24: 13-35 (The moment of realization).
Mark 9: 2-8 (The moment of transfiguration).
I Chronicles 29: 10-30 (A moment of acknowledgement and praise).
Revelation 3: 14-22 (A moment of stark truth).
I Samuel 7: 7-17 (The “Ebenezer” moment).
Mark 14: 1-9 (The anointing moment).
Matthew 17: 1-13 (The transfiguration moment).

The hymn for the week was "This Is My Father’s World ". (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of John Powell, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Evelyn Underhill, Howard Thurman, Truman Capote, Tilden H. Edwards and Jean-Pierre de Caussade (translated by Kitty Muggeridge). (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

• Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:
  “It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.”
• “The supernatural can and does seek and find us, in and through our daily normal experience: the invisible in the visible. There is no need to be peculiar in order to find God.”
• “A king and queen are the center of “where it’s at,” so they move with easy, royal bearing. …Looking deeply at our lineage, we see that we are of the highest royal line: the royal image of God is in us – covered over, but indestructibly there. …We mainly need to attentively relax and dissolve the amnesia that obscures our true identity.”
• “With all the suddenness and jolt of a heart attack, I was filled with an experiential awareness of the presence of God within me.”
• “The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 7 not quoted) mean to you? I look forward to your responses.

John

Chapter 6 - Solitude

Chapter 6 utilized 7 scripture passages to spotlight how solitude was helpful to those taking advantage of it (with my personally assigned title for each passage):

• Luke 5: 12-16 (The priority of private prayer)
• Matthew 4: 1-11 (Quality quiet time builds strength)
• Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13 (A time for everything)
• Luke 22: 39-46 (How solitude can strengthen)
• Galatians 1: 11-24 (Solitude precedes Service)
• Luke 17: 20-21 (The true "kingdom of God")
• Psalms 37: 1-7 (Lessons learned)

The hymn for the week was "I Need Thee Every Hour ". (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Henri J. Nouwen, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Tilden H. Edwards, Edward J. Farrell, Morton T. Kelsey, S. D. Gordon, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas 'a Kempis and Andrew Murray. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “Deserts, silence, solitudes are 'not necessarily places but states of mind and heart'. ...it is God who makes solitude, deserts and silences holy. ...One of the first steps toward solitude is a departure."
• "...Jesus' guidance ... was a rhythm of dealing with individuals, groups and crowds ... There was one other dimension of this rhythm: solitude."
• "As long as my mind is raging with thoughts, ideas, plans and fears, I cannot listen significantly to God or any other dimension of reality. ... In quietness we find detachment and so untie ourselves from total attention to outer, physical reality."
• "How much prayer meant to Jesus! ... There was no emergency, no difficulty, no necessity, no temptation that would not yield to prayer, as He practiced it."
• "Exterior retirement is not sufficient ... but interior retirement is likewise necessary. ... A soul which is separated from all the amusements of the senses seeks and finds in God that pure satisfaction which it can never meet within creatures. ...with a view of honoring His sovereign dominion by the complete destruction of sin in itself, it renounces all desire of finding any other satisfaction than that of pleasing Him."
• "The desert initiates us into the life of the spirit by helping us to discover who we most deeply are."

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 6 not quoted) mean to you? I look forward to your responses.

John