Daily Office Readings for Saturday of the 4th Week of Easter: Year 1
Morning, Psalm 55; Evening, Psalms 138 and 139:
Wisdom 7:1 to 14; Col. 3:12 to 17; Luke 7:18 to 35
“And when I was born, I began to breathe the common air, and fell upon the kindred earth;
my first sound was a cry, as is true of all.” (Wisdom of Solomon 7:3)
It is the breath of God that brought all creation into being, including us, the “human,” beings. According to Genesis, God used the words translated as “Let there be….” And in a series of callings, Creation was brought forth, “and it was so.” And all creation breathed the common air. In my pondering, the word “common” resonates with me, as in our Book of Common Prayer. It is common breath to form Common Prayer.
The writer of this lesson from Wisdom also understands that we are all kindred in creation. We are brothers and sisters. He goes on to acknowledge that our first prayer in thanksgiving to God for our being comes in the form of a cry, our first sound. To cry is to pray. Our cry is God’s way of bonding with us. God’s ears hears tears.
Nothing will bring us closer to God than our personal prayers. Church services, spiritual music or writings, nor close intimate consultation will bring us God’s glimmer of grace like our quiet, surrendering, personal prayer to God, letting the Spirit pray through us. “Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.” (Wisdom 7:7)
My beloved in the Lord, we have not been left orphaned. God is with us. God is watching and listening to us. While Church services, spiritual music or writings, and close intimate consultation in spiritual advisement will enable us to more fully present ourselves open to God, we each need some quiet, private time, to just be with God in prayer. As the Psalmist says, we need to “be still and know that God is God.” (Psalm 46)
I recall again the words of Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” “Inability?” I think not. Therefore, I have restated his words with my own modification: “All of humanity’s problems stem from a person’s “refusal” to sit quietly in a room alone. I believe we can sit quietly in a room alone if we so choose. But we’ve been taught that if we are not jamming our ears and minds with continuous commercial noise we are bored, or that our quality of life is less than it should be. We need to trust the quiet. The noise is our ego, or “Edging God Out.”
Please keep up your thoughts and prayers and hopes for Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, South Sudan and our schools.
As we listen to what the Spirit of God is saying to us, let us live to love and serve, and to teach others to love and serve, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
onewhoponders 