Today is Wednesday the 3rd of January, and we are beginning this new year by considering what it means to pursue the love of God every day. We are thinking about three loves: love for our kind and present God, the love He gives us for our neighbours, and the love the Spirit awakens in our hearts for the lost. Today, we are considering the way that our love for our neighbours informs hospitality, one of the six practices at the heart of Lectio 365.
As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still; to breathe slowly, to re-centre my scattered senses upon the presence of God.
Holy Spirit, You make all things new. Awaken my heart to dream new dreams in this new year. I set aside any baggage or worries I have been carrying, releasing my heavy load, and finding home in Your presence. I breathe in Your pursuing love towards me.
I choose to rejoice in God’s tenderness towards me today, joining with the ancient praise of all God’s people in the words of Psalm 103…
He redeems me from death
and crowns me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things.
My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
Today I am reflecting on the stunning promise of Scripture that there will come a day when we will be at home, with God, forever. We find these words in the closing chapters of the Bible:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”
The beginning and end of all my stories find home in the presence of Jesus. American writer N. D. Wilson writes, ‘and to an infinite artist, a Creator in love with His craft, there is no unimportant corner, there is no thrown-away image, no tattered thread in the novel left untied.’*
I think of the loose ends in my own story and in the lives of those I love. This Scripture gives me a prophetic expectation that in the middle places, there will be tears, but one day God will wipe them away from our eyes. There will be death, but one day its power will be undone. As I learn to trust Jesus with the unfinished stories, I long to be a safe space to welcome friends to bring their whole selves, joy and tears, into the presence of an eternally loving God.
Holy Spirit, make room. Will You sweep out the cluttered corners of my heart so that I can love You and my community without distraction.
To the thirsty, the Spirit gives from the spring of the water of life without payment (Isaiah 55:1-2). I think of those in my life and community who are thirsty. I call to mind one who has been particularly parched by the desert spaces this past year.
Spirit of the living God, will You show me how to offer the water of Your life to a friend today.
I am arrested again by the authority of this passage, a loud voice proclaiming the eternal promise of hospitality, the wide-open welcome of a loving God…
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”
God dwells with me, welcoming me with eternal hospitality. C. S. Lewis once wrote:
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.
What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.**
Father, I surrender my whole life and heart to You again today. Make Yourself at home and reframe my life with Your vision. Live as King within every room of my heart.
And now, as I prepare to take this time of prayer into the coming day, the Lord who loves me says in John:
Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.There is more than enough room in our Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
Father, help me to live this day to the full,
being true to You, in every way.
Jesus, help me to give myself away to others,
being kind to everyone I meet.
Spirit, help me to love the lost,
proclaiming Christ in all I do and say.
Amen.
* N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2013), 108.
** C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan, 1960) p. 160.
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