The worries, cares, and uncertainties we face in life can crowd out our peace. But what if we’ve misunderstood what God means by peace? Join me in encountering God and receiving his peace and comfort in this mini-retreat, filmed at sunset by the shores of Lake Josephine in Roseville, Minnesota. In doing so we’ll prayerfully engage with Isaiah 61:1–3. As you focus on the God of peace, he will fill you with his peace.
Do feel free to stop the video and pause in prayer to receive from God.
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Join me for a mini-retreat, with time to pause, reflect on Scriputre, and experience God? Here’s my latest prayer practice (of 7 minutes) that I sent out with my monthly newsletter, perfect for this season of Advent.
We’ll be engaging with some lectio divina (prayerful reading) of the first part of John’s gospel (John 1:1–5, 9, 14, NIV). During the Advent season, it’s beneficial and meaningful to ponder Jesus, the true light who has come into the world.
Feel free to pause the video at any point as you ponder and reflect with God.
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Did you know that Jane Austen was a devoted Christian? We have access to three of her prayers – those when she led the family prayers at night. Join me at Jane’s home in Chawton, Hampshire, England, with an adaptation of one of her inspiring and uplifting prayers. The images are all from the grounds at her final beloved home, where she was able to be most fruitful in her writing.
You can find the three prayers in their original form here.
As we approach Holy Week next week, the culmination of the season of Lent, we can be gentle to ourselves, however we’re feeling, whether tired, weary, hopeful, or perhaps wishing that we’d kept more rigorously to the practices we chose at the start. Whatever has gone before us, know that God welcomes us to journey with Jesus in the here and now. God’s loving invitation to deepen our faith during this holy week stands.
One way to approach this week is to consider what Jesus experienced each day of his life that week. To help imagine what was happening at various moments, I invite you to download an outline of the events, which I’ve adapted from the NIV Application Commentary: Matthew by Michael J. Wilkins (Zondervan, 2004), pp. 709–10.
I also invite you to join me on Tuesday for a half-hour of prayer via zoom as I lead an engagement with Jesus’ journey via Coracle’s Space for God. More information here.
Lord Jesus Christ, as we enter into the events of this Holy Week, I come to you in humility, confessing my wrongdoing and receiving your forgiveness. May the events of this last week of your life be brought alive to me, that I might know you more intimately and be more grateful for your sacrifice, which gives me life. I join the crowds to shout out with joy, “Hosanna to the King of kings! Blessed are you who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
I loved co-leading a “Poetry and Prayer” retreat with Amy Scott Robinson recently at Launde Abbey, learning from Amy as she helped us to explore different forms of poetry. One of those is the biblical poetic form of the refrain, which is a wonderful way to express ourselves to God. And it’s easy to write one; I promise!
As Amy shared, what’s so wonderful about the poetry in the Psalms (ancient Hebrew poetry) is that it doesn’t depend on patterns and rhythms of words, but patterns and rhythms of ideas. It uses synonyms and antonyms, metaphors and refrains, all of which we can see in translation. Isn’t that amazing! We who aren’t able to read Hebrew don’t miss out.
A form of poetry in the Psalms is refrain—a repeated line or phrase that adds emphasis and rhythm in a poem or prayer:
Psalm 136 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever.
Here’s a refrain that I wrote while on the retreat with Amy (and thus I did it in a short space of time). I hope you see how the repeating of lines helps us to consider again the idea – maybe it helps us move more from the head to the heart?
From Job 1:21
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
When sorrow strikes at the season’s end: A call to obey and relinquish… The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
From a distance I see new gifts to welcome while bidding the familiar farewell. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
When I led this prayer exercise recently for Coracle’s Space for God (which happens regularly on a Tuesday), I was delighted with some of the refrains shared at the end of our time together. Here’s one from Jamie:
Identity
You are all fair, my love There is no spot in you.
Created with intention and beauty I see the goodness of God in you You are all fair, my love
Washed clean and made new Clothed in Christ’s righteousness. There is no spot in you
You are all fair, my love There is no spot in you
And here is one by Jerry Herbert, who was one of my teachers some years ago (!) on the American Studies Program in Washington, DC:
Your Word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path
Your Word is a lamp to my feet A guide in the midst of confusion A help when all is chaos
And a light to my path A spectacle when all is obscure A knife to slice thru the darkness
Your Word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path
I’d love to invite you to write a refrain! Here’s how:
Take 2 lines of scripture (or a line in two parts)
State them
Separate them with your own lines of context and interpretation
Bring them together again
Suggestions for verses:
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Psalm 119:105)
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you (Numbers 6:24-26)
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. (Psalm 23:1)
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21)
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit (Jonah 2:6)
Join me on the shores of the island of Iona as we stop and notice God’s presence with us. In a four-minute video, I invite you to affirm the amazing truth that if we welcome Jesus in our lives, Christ is with us.
God looks on us with love. Join me for a mini-retreat (for 10 minutes) in receiving God’s loving gaze, along with imagining yourself in the story of Jesus seeing the widow of Nain during the funeral procession of her only son from Luke’s gospel.
Filmed at Upper Jenny’s at Lee Abbey, Lee Bay, Devon, England.
You may wish to engage with this longer prayer practice on a day of retreat and refreshment. Feel free to pause the video and engage with God where he takes you.
Join me in a prayer of imagining yourself in a gospel story, that of the two disciples walking away from Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus on the day of the resurrection. Their faces are downcast as they don’t understand what has happened, and then Jesus appears to them on the road, but they are kept from knowing it is him.
You may wish to engage with this longer prayer practice on a day of retreat and refreshment. Feel free to pause the video and engage with God where he takes you.
Join me in the woods near to Penhurst Retreat Centre (near Battle in East Sussex, England) to ponder and pray through some of the words of Thérèse of Lisieux, known as the little flower. As part of this, we’ll engage in a prayer asking God for emotional healing, based on Thérèse’s thoughts.
She saw the beauty of the ordinary flowers – the daisies and lilies as much as the roses. After all, what would be the glories of springtime if we only had roses? So too, how lovely is the garden of souls, made in the image of God with so much creativity and diversity.
Join me before Iona Abbey as the sun rises as we ask Jesus the Light to clarify any areas of wrongdoing we are holding. God will always release us and welcome us to experience freedom and release.
