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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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!”
Join me in pondering the God of abundance in the Ten Acre Gill near to Penhurst Retreat Centre. (A ‘gill’ is a wooded ravine.) What resources might he have for you that he’s inviting you to notice and pick? How is he providing for you in unexpected and delightful ways?
I also share a simple but tasty recipe for wild garlic pesto.
Join me on retreat! My list of dates for 2024 and some of 2025 is available on my speaking page.
As we move through the events of Holy Week, I invite you to enter into the “Gethsemane moment” in John’s gospel, from John 12. Some Greeks – simply meaning those who were not Jewish – appeared before several of the disciples and asked if they could see Jesus. This to Jesus signified that his hour had come, and he set his face to the cross.
Let me know if you use this prayer exercise, and if you’re willing, how God met you. May entering the story of Jesus and his hour enrich your faith in him and your love for others.
If you’d like a monthly boost for a fresh prayer practice, sign up to my monthly newsletter. I always give away some kind of great resource or gift too, and I don’t restrict the winner by geographical location.
Want me to lead you in a prayer exercise right here, right now? Check out my YouTube channel and let me know how you met with God; I so appreciate hearing your stories.
Thinking about choosing a word for the year? Here are my blogs on the topic. I love this practice!
May you know the presence of our loving God this day, this week, this month, and this year.
Happy new year! I’m glad to share this prayer for 2024 by George Dawson from the 1800s – still applicable today.
You might also want to consider three simple prayer practices you might want to add in the new year to strengthen your relationship with God. Read the blog hosted at God Hears Her here.
I pray you will have a peaceful and joyous start to the new year as you cling to the loving presence of God.
Today here in the UK I’ve learned that it’s National Poetry Day! This just so happened to coincide with me leading one of Coracle’s Space for God slots, where we coming together as a community to encounter God, and I led us in writing a pantoum, a kind of poem. (You are more than welcome to join the Tuesday and/or the Thursday cohort! Links for both on the Coracle website. If you would like to engage with this prayer practice through the Space for God video, it is here.)
I’ve been thinking about liminal space ever since Gabriel Dodd shared his excellent thoughts on the topic in his Space for God. I later that afternoon wrote a pantoum about my own encounters with liminal space—the already but not yet experience that we encounter so often in life as followers of Jesus.
Today I encouraged us to wrestle with and sink into a passage from Romans, which pulses with the already-but-not-yet:
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. (Romans 8:22–27, NIV)
It’s deceptively simple to craft a pantoum—if you can jot down six phrases or lines, you have got it! I invite you to join in with this special practice:
ponder with God what liminal space you’re in
pray through the Romans passage
go where the Spirit leads
remember that the Spirit intercedes on your behalf
How to create a pantoum:
write six lines or phrases
label them A through F
choose most important line as A
make the second most important F
order the lines in the following pattern:
A
B
C
D
B
E
D
F
E
C
F
A
I would love to hear from you if you engage in the practice, and if you meet God through it!
May the mystery of God enfold us,
may the wisdom of God uphold us,
may the fragrance of God be around us,
may the brightness of God surround us,
may the wonder of God renew us,
may the loving of God flow through us,
may the peace of God deeply move us,
may the moving of God bring us peace.
Joy Cowley, Aotearoa, New Zealand as found in Geoffrey Duncan, compiler, A World of Blessing: Benedictions from every continent and many cultures (Norwich: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2000), p. 226.
A prayer to deepen our friendship with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, who takes us to the Father, by Augustine of Hippo:
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.
