Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: prayer

  • The Problem of Productivity by Elizabeth Neep: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    As we explore different ways to pray, we realize that sometimes the best practice is simply stopping and resting – or taking time to create, as we hear from my lovely editor, Elizabeth Neep. (And don’t miss last week’s funny and thoughtful contribution from my US editor, Dave Zimmerman.)

    One of Elizabeth’s creations.

    For most people, the global pandemic is synonymous with slowing down. Seemingly overnight, commutes were halted, city streets abandoned, projects and parties postponed. And yet, for me, things were only just getting started.

    After a season of waiting (one that looks shorter and shorter the further away I am from it), I entered this now iconic year with a new job, the opportunity to develop a brand-new imprint for SPCK and seven book deals to honour in my spare time. I don’t say this to show off (if the runaway success of John Mark Comer’s The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is anything to go by, the glorification of busyness is no longer in vogue anyway!) but to say that, from the outside looking in, I was having my most productive year yet. And I was – professionally.

    The truth is, as ‘productive’ as I like to consider myself, we all have the same twenty-four hours in the day. And, for every moment I have spent advancing in my career, I have not spent my time doing other things: I see necessary life admin as an annoyance and my long-suffering boyfriend has had to be content with the scraps of my time. And the reason? I too often see ‘productivity’ as a linear line graph, a steady climb, countless things I can tick off the to-do list, neat and defined. Thankfully, God doesn’t see things the same way as me.

    I can’t tell you how many times I have come to God with my neatly structured agenda of the things I want to thank him for and say sorry for before swiftly moving on to my requests. I can’t tell you how many times I have asked for specific answers, for guidance, to then get nothing apart from a nebulous ‘just rest’ or ‘just be with me’ or (perhaps most frustratingly of all) ‘why don’t you go and paint?’. But why would I go and paint when I have a thousand jobs people are chasing me for? I don’t need to paint a picture or even know what to paint. And where on earth would I hang it? Time again God reminds me it’s not about the outcome. 

    Where my (perceived) productivity looks like an ascending line graph, God’s productivity looks like a deepening, the gentle sanding of a stone until it is shiny and smooth, a ‘task’ that is never ticked off the to-do list but is even more productive for the fact it’s never ‘done’. It’s the kind of productivity that sees us cultivate deep and long-lasting relationships, not by checking in once every month because we have to but laughing with each other late into the night because we want to. It’s the kind of productivity that brings us back to the pages of the Bible, the one book we can never finish because even though we’ve read the words before, we are invited to enjoy the same lines a million different ways. It’s the kind of productivity that scribbles over my agenda and asks me to paint, precisely because it’s not for anyone, and though I might not even know what I’m painting, God knows that somewhere along the way, I will stop thinking about the end product and just enjoy playing and resting with him.

    Which paradoxically, I am learning (again and again and again…) is the most productive thing we can ever hope to (not) achieve.

    Elizabeth Neep is a Senior Commissioning Editor at SPCK, where she heads up their Form imprint. She is also a novelist writing under her name and Lizzie O’Hagan, a trustee for Kintsugi Hope and can usually be found drinking flat whites around Central London. 

    Find out more about 7 Ways to Pray here, including how to pre-order in the US, UK, and Australia. Publication date is Tuesday!

  • A mountaintop experience by Dave Zimmerman: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    Welcome to a new series on prayer! As I launch my book 7 Ways to Pray, I’m delighted to share with you each week a blogpost from someone special. One of the things I love about prayer is that we’re all so different and thus enjoy different ways to pray. Shining the spotlight on the experiences of others will be a rich and encouraging experience, as you’ll see from this first post.

    Who better to kick off the series than my editors? I have a huge respect for this breed of individual – having been one previously, I know how fragile the author ego can be, for instance. They bring an added extra to book projects, and the fingerprints of Dave Zimmerman, my US editor, and Elizabeth Neep, my UK one, are all over this project in fantastic ways. Today we hear from Dave – I challenge you not to chuckle (and then ponder deeply) – and next week we’ll hear from Elizabeth. Enjoy!

    Not every editor gets to work for a Big Five publisher (or Big Four these days, as some entities are too big to fail but not too big to be absorbed into something bigger). Not all of us can take the company jet to an author lunch, and order the jumbo shrimp instead of the shrimpy shrimp, and then fly back to the Big Apple to ring the bell at an IPO or accompany their author to a taping of The View. No, some of us do our editing in relative quietude, at the desks of nonprofits, serving as the metaphorical sous-chefs to our authors as they bake the metaphorical bread of their books for us to cast onto the metaphorical waters of the book selling marketplace, with hopes of many happy returns (and very few sad ones).

    Some of us on that end of the editorial spectrum, it should be said, occasionally do get to spend time in a castle. I can’t speak for my colleague Elizabeth Neep, Amy’s British editor for 7 Ways to Pray (although being in England she’s statistically more likely than I to drive past a castle on her commute). But drive past a castle on my commute I do, because tucked away on the front range of the Rocky Mountains of southern Colorado is the Glen Eyrie Castle and Conference Center, which, like NavPress, is a ministry of The Navigators. And every September that castle is opened to myself and my colleagues at The Navigators HQ for a day of prayer. 

    Dave and a colleague at the Glen Eyrie Castle and Conference Center. Photo by Kara Zimmerman.

    We pray for the various ministries of The Navigators. We pray for unity among our diverse and distributed staff. We pray for the needs of our world and our nation and for the resiliency of our shared mission. And we end our day by dispersing into extended periods of time alone with God.

    On one such day of prayer I decided I would take a hike as high into the hills as my little legs and delicate deck shoes would take me. I found a trail and kept on going, chatting with God as I went. The higher I went the thinner the air got, and the sparser the foliage. Eventually the trail leveled off relatively high against the tree line, and I decided to sit a bit and journal. 

    I am not a natural pray-er. Amy’s book has been very good for me in that way. I need prompts and practices to latch onto, because otherwise my mind wanders and my prayers turn to mutters. 

    On occasions like this day of prayer, however, I’m a little better able to focus. Prayer is the point of the day, and our program has primed my pump. I have lots of thoughts, but those thoughts are mostly turned toward God, thanks to the careful curation of my colleagues.

    Photo credit: Kara Zimmerman

    So there I found myself, at the top of a trail, pump primed, a journal in one hand and a pen in the other. I offered a moment of consecration and commenced to drafting a dialogue with God. It was pretty impressive if I do say so myself: earthy but elegant, pious but authentic. I was in some kind of zone.

    Then I got restless, so I started walking again, taking joy in the day. I had a thought and I decided to share it with God as I walked. “You know what would make this time of prayer perfect?” I offered. “I would love to see some wildlife.”

    It’s worth noting here that seeing wildlife on the grounds of the Glen Eyrie Castle and Conference Center is not at all uncommon. We are, after all, up against the Rockies, surrounded by mule deer and bobcats and bears and bighorn sheep. This was not, in my pious mind, an extravagant request.

    Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of movement. I turned my head and found myself face to face with a dragonfly.

    I turned to my left and saw a squirrel. I turned to my right and saw a bird.

    I turned my attention back to God. “That’s not what I meant.”

    “I know,” I believe God said to me in that moment. “I don’t care.” 

    It can seem like a faith crisis to hear the voice of God tell you he doesn’t care about what you want. I don’t know about you, but I have been steeped for some time in popular theologies that suggest God is actually preoccupied with what we want. The ways that we so often pray reflect that assumption: We list our requests or register our complaints or otherwise offer God a guided tour through our drama.

    That’s one reason why books on prayer abound, why books like Amy’s are so important. As natural and primal as talking to God is, what constitutes a meaningful conversation with God can easily get all jumbled up in our heads. We need guidance. We need a mix of confidence and humility. We need to think about what prayer is. And we need to get over ourselves a little. 

    On that day of prayer I had gotten a bit lofty. I needed to return to earth. In his grace, God gave me a lift.

    When I heard God say he didn’t care about my request, I pictured him smiling as he said it. I don’t have a mental image of what God looks like, for the record, any more than I heard an audible voice deliver me that message. But God made himself manifest to me in that lofty space, during that consecrated time, and I believe he conveyed clearly to me that (1) he was for me and (2) I could maybe take things down a notch. 

    I envisioned myself sharing a chuckle with God, remembering that I am made of the dust of the earth, like the grass that inevitably withers—but also remembering that it was God himself who breathed life into me, and that he made me, and you, a little lower than the angels, in his own image and likeness. 

    I ended my day of prayer shortly after I shared that laugh with the God of the universe. I walked back down the hill to the parking lot of the Glen Eyrie Castle and Conference Center, hopped in my car, and drove home. And I have remembered that divine encounter ever since.

    David Zimmerman is Publisher of NavPress, the publishing arm of The Navigators. He started his editorial career at InterVarsity Press. His Twitter bio says that he’s a “Middle aged middle child in middle management. I work as a publisher of Christian nonfiction. I’m interested in books, music, work, and everyday life.” Find him at Twitter.

    Find out more about 7 Ways to Pray here, including how to pre-order in the US, UK, and Australia.

  • The Power of Prayer in the Ordinary

    Yesterday my daughter and I enjoyed an everything-goes-right travel day. I’m taking some time to write about this because I see it as an answer to prayer. Now when we have one of those atrocious everything-goes-wrong travel days, that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us. Rather I’m taking yesterday as a gift of love – an extra grace.

    I worked to keep calm and in the right frame of mind throughout the day, with just two blips. One was a moment of reckoning on the way to Heathrow, when we were two-thirds of the way there, our flight delayed by an hour meaning that we’d not make our connection in Atlanta, meaning an extra six hours would be added to our journey. Meaning I’d be driving to our friends in Virginia at 11:30pm (which would have been 4.30am British time).

    The longest and hardest wait was at the beginning, at the airport, not knowing if we’d find a solution or if the long, long day lay ahead. Is that true in life? We don’t know what next steps to take or what the final outcome will be. The miasma of uncertainty can throw us at this point, when having faith while waiting can feel excruciating.  

    I went to the wrong queue, waiting at the Virgin Atlantic service counter instead of going to Delta. That cost us some time. More time at Delta as the queues moved at a seeming glacial pace. So much to check these days with covid certificates, travel attestation forms, and so on. At the Delta line when my turn came, we had a switch-over of employees. The woman who arrived seemed flustered from the start as she searched and searched through her purse/handbag, looking for a pencil as it turned out. Then she found she couldn’t log on. She’d been furloughed for over a month and the systems had changed. After more than twenty minutes I started to waver in my patience when I saw people at the next line over moving through the system, and finally asked if I could change queues.

    That was a good move. The person there was clearly very competent, and when I asked if anything could be done in terms of finding a better flight – without nearly 5 hours in Atlanta – she said she’d work on it. She got a supervisor to come over, Mohammed, and as she moved her screen and keyboard for him to reach over the counter to see what he could do, I joked, “Ah, do you have the magic hands!” (Meaning the secret codes released to those at a certain level.) He smiled and kept on typing.

    After a few stops and starts, he smiled and said, “Yes, this will work.” He routed us through New York’s JFK airport getting us to our destination two hours before our original time!

    Flight to JFK went well. I started to wonder if we would make the connection when getting through immigration took a long time. Then security took a long time, and I left my iPad in a bag, which meant that it had to be rescanned. And our gate was B51 – almost the most far away in that terminal from security. We were cutting it very tight and because my daughter got scraped up in a mountain biking accident at camp (she’s fine but it’s sore), she couldn’t walk hugely fast. So when we got to the gate, although we were 10 minutes before the flight and it still said, “Boarding,” the gate agent was gone and it appeared we were too late. Sigh.

    After resigning ourselves to time in the airport – at least I could get some food for my daughter who hadn’t eaten either of the meal offerings on the plane – the gate agent came out and said that we could board because there was a malfunction on the plane. Now no one likes to hear of a malfunction but it was simply the deliberator’s batteries weren’t working. So we boarded, waited just a half hour, and landed – still ahead of time.

    I write this sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs in the photo above, looking at the lovely view, hearing the birds, cicadas, satisfied from a breakfast of croissant and eggs from chickens raised here at Corhaven. Giving thanks for these answered prayers for this day of travel, received with gratitude. Reminding myself to think back to the day-where-everything-went-right the next time I’m traveling.

    How to you exercise faith when the outcome isn’t clear?

  • Join me for a seven-week online retreat on 7 Ways to Pray!

    Would you like to explore seven ways to pray, under the guidance of a seasoned retreat leader? Join me in engaging with time-tested prayer practices as outlined in my new book, 7 Ways to Pray. You’ll not only learn more about these ways to pray in a nonthreatening setting, but you’ll have plenty of time to try them out—and thus to encounter our loving God.

    What:

    • 7 sessions on zoom, either joining live or watching later (each session no longer than 60 minutes)
    • An exploration of the prayer practice with plenty of time to try it out, reflect, and share
    • Downloadable resources, including a prayer journal
    • A private FB group for you to get to know the other participants (optional)

    When:

    Two streams, Tuesdays or Saturdays:

    Tuesdays from 8-9pm in the UK (3-4pm, EDT; 12-1pm PDT)
    7, 14, 21, 28 September; 5, 12, 19 October

    Saturdays from 10-11am, Eastern daylight time (7–8am PDT; 3–4pm UK)
    September 11, 18, 25; October 2, 9, 16, 23

    (I’m sorry that these times aren’t very friendly to those in Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. I know some lovely ones there who might want to join in. I’d love to run a retreat for you if we could get enough people together; let me know if you’re a people-gatherer and can help make this happen.)

    How much:

    The suggested cost is £60/$80, but you’re free to subsidize others or to receive the generosity of others. I’m trying to keep it simple as possible while having some options to give or receive:

    • Sign up in the store if you are paying the suggested cost of £60 in pound sterling.
    • If you are paying the suggested amount in US dollars, please send $80 to me via PayPal through this link (and tick the box you’re receiving a service) and email me to let me know you are coming at amy@amyboucherpye.com.
    • If you want to subsidize others or be subsidized, then send me an email at amy@amyboucherpye.com to confirm that you are attending the course and I will sign you up. You can send money in US dollars to me via PayPal through this link or money in pound sterling to me at this link. (Or email me for bank details for a transfer to avoid PayPal charges.)
    • If finances preclude you coming, please join without paying. Email me at amy@amyboucherpye.com to let me know you are attending.
    • Does your small group want to join together? Be in touch and we can work out a group rate. (See below for more ideas for small groups.)

    Description:

    Week 1
    Praying with the Bible (personalizing Scripture, poetry, and others)

    Week 2
    Praying through the Bible (lectio divina – a four-step way to digest God’s word)

    Week 3
    Practicing the Presence (exploring the indwelling of God and unceasing prayer)

    Week 4
    Hearing God (including learning to discern God’s voice)

    Week 5
    Lament (crying out to God when life doesn’t go as we hoped)

    Week 6
    Imaginative prayer (placing ourselves in the stories of Jesus with our imaginations)

    Week 7
    Examen (looking back to discern how we’re moving toward or away from God)

    Next steps:

    Please sign up! I’ll be in touch in early September to send you the link to the private Facebook group, and you’ll also receive your zoom details and downloadable resources.

    Ideas for small groups:

    Want to join as a small group? Let me know and we can arrange for you to be in break-out rooms together. Also, you could follow the example of a group that will gather via their own zoom link for a half-hour prior to our meeting to catch up and share how the prayer journey is going.

    About your sponsor:

    Coracle, who is generously sponsoring this retreat, is the wonderful organization out of Virginia with whom I’ve just become a spiritual director. They exist to inspire and enable people to be the presence of God in the world by offering spiritual formation and Kingdom action. They help people become who they are in Christ so that through Christ they can bring God’s kingdom to a broken world through their lives, relationships, vocations, service, and risks.

    About your host:

    Amy Boucher Pye is a writer, speaker, retreat leader, and spiritual director. She’s the author of 7 Ways to Pray and other books, including the award-winning Finding Myself in Britain. She loves writing devotional thoughts, including for the globally recognized Our Daily Bread, and runs the Woman Alive book club. She received her MA in Christian spirituality from Heythrop College, University of London. She regularly leads retreats at El Palmeral in Spain, Lee Abbey, Devon, and Penhurst Retreat Centre in East Sussex.

  • Praying with a Painting: Seeds and the harvest

    A large acrylic painting of a big red combine out in the yellow fields, under a cloudy blue sky.
    By Leo Boucher. Used with permission; all rights reserved.

    It feels fitting to be offering this prayer exercise while sitting outside in the sunshine while upstairs in my study my daughter enjoys an art lesson with my dad via video chat. Feel the sun warm your toes and the breeze gently float around you, and picture yourself somewhere where it’s not too hot and not too cool. Where the clouds pass over the sun, dampening the temperature a bit. Where you hear the cry of the blackbird in the distance.

    Use my dad’s painting of a combine harvesting in late summer as a jumping point for prayer. Follow the Spirit where he leads. You might want to ponder seeds and growth in the kingdom of God from this parable of Jesus:

    26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:26–29, NIV).

    Bonus to come—Sharon Garlough Brown leads us in lectio divina on this Scripture passage in a video interview I will post in September!

  • Praying with a Painting – Jesus the Vine


    [Image: By Leo Boucher. Used with permission; all rights reserved. Pen and watercolor with Jesus at the center, surrounded by leaves and vines.]

    Today we move away from Watercolor Wednesday to welcome a new series, Praying with a Painting. I’m still going to be featuring my dad’s wonderful artwork, but want to use it as a jumping point for prayer.

    One form of praying with the help of an image is visio divina, which is Latin for sacred seeing, and many weeks we’ll use this slow, thoughtful form of engaging prayerfully. Other weeks we’ll find different ways to interact with the paintings. I hope that these posts will provide you a mini-retreat during your busy day.

    Today we’re thinking about Jesus the Vine, which is what he calls himself in John 15, in what’s known as the Last Discourse. He and his friends have eaten their last supper together, and as they walk from the upper room to the Garden of Gethsemane, he shares with them of life in the kingdom. Yes, he’ll be going away, but he will be sending the Advocate, the Spirit to be with them. As part of this discussion he also calls himself the Vine and his friends the branches, and that as they abide in him they will bear fruit.

    Join me in praying with this painting?

    1. Still yourself before God, asking him to surround you with his presence.
    2. You may wish to start with reading John 15:1–17, to have the passage in your mind.
    3. As you look at the painting, notice what strikes you in it. Spend a few moments gazing at that part of the image and welcome God to speak to you. Notice what thoughts appear in your mind – if you find yourself distracted, just note the matter if you need to and then gently return yourself to the task.
    4. Respond to God, offering any praises, questions, intercessions, petitions, statements of thanks. You might want to affirm that Jesus is the Vine and that you are connected to him. That his Spirit flows through you, and that with him you can produce luscious fruit that lasts.
    5. Take a few moments to rest in God’s presence.

  • New Lent resource: The Prayers of Jesus

    Looking for resources for Lent? Looking for someone to give a talk on the prayers of Jesus during Lent?

    I’ve written an interactive small-group resource for Lent called The Prayers of Jesus, published by CWR (Waverley Resources) in which we explore 6 of the 7 prayers of Jesus in the gospels. It gives you the tools for leading the session, such as prayers, activities, background on the particular prayer of Jesus, discussion questions, and a prayer activity for the group.

    I’m really excited about it because I’m excited about the prayers of Jesus! I’m especially thrilled that I was able to add the prayer activities to this format, for when we make time to pray together, we find that God responds in amazing ways.

    Would you like me to zoom into your meeting/service during Lent to give a talk? I have a limited number of spaces available. I’m not charging a fee to come but I’d be grateful if I could supply the booklets to your small groups. Contact me if you’re interested.

    The resource goes for £6 each. Here’s my discount plan:

    • 1-6 copies, 16% discount, £5 each plus postage
    • 7-9 copies, 21% discount £4.75 each plus postage
    • 10 or more, 25% discount, £4.50 each plus postage

    With postage to the UK:

    • 1 = £6.53
    • 2 = £11.99
    • 3 = £16.99
    • 4 = £22.70
    • 5 = £27.70
    • 6 = £33
    • 7 = £36.25
    • 8 = £41
    • 9 = £45.75
    • 10 = £48
    • (above 10 contact me)

    If you’re not in the UK, I am happy to explore options, but postage might be prohibitive.

  • Join me in an online retreat: At home with Jesus

    If you’re feeling stuck at home during this season of the easing of lockdown, why not set aside some time with Jesus? You’ll experience refreshment, inspiration, and rest as we explore some gospel stories. Join me June 20 for timings suitable to North America and 4 July for the UK/Europe.

    At Home with Jesus
    Jesus loved his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and their home in Bethany was his second home. We’ll explore action and contemplation, faith and doubt, despair and longing, resurrection and hope, sacrificial love, and the meaning of home. Each session has teaching along with the space for you to meet with God in interactive prayer exercises. Expect to be refreshed, inspired, and challenged to sit at the feet of Jesus, knowing again how much he longs to spend time with you, while also collaborating with him as you serve him.

    Session 1: Prayer and action
    Mary and Martha have been made into types, but they were so much more than that. In this session we’ll explore being and doing, learning and serving, prayer and action – how the one doesn’t negate the other.

    Session 2: “If you’d been here, Jesus…”
    Where is Jesus when we need him? That’s what both Mary and Martha asked him after their beloved brother Lazarus died: Where were you? We’ll explore lament and how to bring our feelings to Jesus – and how he transforms us through his love.

    Session 3: Love poured out
    Mary wasn’t afraid to show her love to Jesus in a public setting, even though her act shocked those around her. And Jesus received her anointing as a gift. How can we unselfconsciously pour out our love to Jesus?

    Timings:
    June 20 (for men and women in North America)
    Session 1: 10–11am Eastern, 9–10am Central, 8–9am Mountain, 7–8am West Coast
    Session 2: noon–1pm Eastern, 11–noon Central, 10–11am Mountain, 9–10am West Coast
    Session 3: 3–4pm Eastern, 2–3pm Central, 1–2pm Mountain, noon–1pm West Coast 

    To book, send me an email (amy@amyboucherpye.com) saying that you’d like to attend. I’ll then send you the Zoom link and the materials beforehand. The suggested donation is $25 USD. If this fee would keep you from attending, please don’t send anything. If you can contribute more, you could be covering the cost for someone else. Here’s the link: paypal.me/amyboucherpyeUSA

    4 July (for women)
    Session 1: 10–11am UK 
    Session 2: 11.45–12.45am UK 
    Session 3: 1.45–2.45pm UK 

    Hosted by CWR, the wonderful organization that produces Inspiring Women Every Day. To book, here’s the link. There is a fee of £20, payable to CWR. 

    [Painting by Leo Boucher. Used with permission; all rights reserved.]

  • Jesus’ last week: A guide to prayer

    We’ve arrived at Holy Week, ushered in yesterday on Palm Sunday when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. As I outline in my book, The Living Cross, one way to approach Holy Week is to consider each day what Jesus experienced, being conscious throughout the day of the unfolding events. I compiled the following based on what I found in Michael J. Wilkins, The NIV Application Commentary: Matthew (Zondervan, 2004), pp. 
709–10.

    Saturday (8 April)

    Palm Sunday (9 April)

    Monday (10 April)

    Tuesday (11 April)

    Wednesday (12 April)

    Thursday (13 April)

    Good Friday (14 April)

    Holy Saturday (15 April)

    • (Waiting.)

    Resurrection Sunday (16 April)

  • Returning home

    No Place Like HomeI love this series, “There’s No Place Like Home,” because of the many rich contributions from thoughtful, deep writers. There’s more to come in the following weeks and months, but I wanted to break in today with a post inspired by the community here in Spain which feels like a home away from home.

    The chapel at El Palmeral.
    The chapel at El Palmeral.

    We gather for morning prayer in the outdoor chapel, letting the words of the Celtic prayers move us into communicating with God. We’re accompanied by the strains of Anna Raine singing through parts of the liturgy. It’s a favorite part of my week here at El Palmeral in Spain.

    But the closing song of our time of prayer always provokes emotion in me, for the music and words make me long for home. Here’s the blessing of which I speak, as found on the Northumbria Community website:

    Blessing
    May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
    wherever He may send you.
    May He guide you through the wilderness,
    protect you through the storm.
    May He bring you home rejoicing
    at the wonders He has shown you.
    May He bring you home rejoicing
    once again into our doors.

    DSCN4156I get choked up at the going out and coming back, for it makes me remember that I’m sent. Not only am I sent from my parent’s home into the world, but I’m sent from the States to the UK. I’m sent this week from London to Elche to lead this retreat. I’ll be sent in May to Glasgow and Gloucestershire. We’re sent out, and then we return home.

    Home rejoicing, as the words say. Home, thankful for the work the Lord has done in and through us when we’ve been away. Home to rest and relax and recuperate and renew. Home to work.

    And I guess the song hooks into my emotions because I think of leaving the friends here – new friends and old – and yet I look forward to going back to see my family. (This is intensified because during the last singing of the verse on the last day, we grasp hands and look at each person, bestowing the blessing on them with eye contact and smiles.) And I think of all the friends and family I don’t get to see on a regular basis, because our homes are hundreds or thousands of miles apart. And the longing returns to be reunited.

    And of course the largest longing of all is to be with God and loved ones in the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom that can be here and now; the kingdom to come.

    May we love and bless and be at home this day.

    Detail from the large mural depicting Jacob's ladder on the back wall of the chapel.
    Detail from the large mural depicting Jacob’s ladder on the back wall of the chapel.