7-13-23 - Love Among Thorns

You can listen to this reflection here.

In the parable Jesus tells about seeds taking root or withering, depending on where they fall, many of the forces that imperil them are by-products of a location, not the location itself – the birds that can pick seeds off a path, the sun that can scorch them on rocks. But now we come to a place which itself imperils a seed: “Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.”

When we try to plant the seeds of sacrificial love and other-directedness amid a thicket of competing claims… look out. We sow love in a very thorny landscape. The cares of the world and the lure of wealth, to which Jesus likened the thorns in his story, are very strong in our culture, while traditional religious norms have become weaker. Some churches respond to diminishing fruitfulness by trying to place the benefits they offer among those other lures – “Look at the return you can get for your investment here!” Really large ones offer their own version of the competition, such as church-based banks and fitness centers.

The competing claims of wealth, family, security, recreation, status are a given. How might we embrace those goods without worshipping them?

What most chokes your desire to be connected to God? For me, it's time and the to-do list. It can also be success – getting what you’ve always wanted. Even loved ones can choke our desire for God instead of directing us to that love.

What can we do about that? How might we invite Jesus into our time management, our to-do lists, our relationship priorities? Some people set timers to remind them to stop and pray. Others make sure to take a prayer walk each day.

If our relationships or our work loom larger than our God-connection, maybe we can invite God to be more fully a part of those areas in our lives, and figure out how.

Today, let’s contemplate the thorns in which we occasionally find ourselves, and pray for them to be transformed into roses. God has an amazing way of taking what we offer, and not removing it from our lives, but consecrating it for us, making it holy, as God is ever making us holy.

We need not fear the choking thorns when we turn daily to the source of our breath.

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7-12-23 - Of Rocks and Sun

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

Rocks and sun are a perfect environment for lizards. For plants? Not so much…

We’ve probably all encountered the fervor of a convert – someone hot on a new thing they’ve learned or experienced. A new love, a new job, maybe a new diet. We may even have met a few Christians in the first throes of excitement about the love of God they’ve come to know in Christ. Sometimes it lasts, sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on the depth of soil that allows roots to grow.

“Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.”

What conditions make for rocky soil? Sometimes familiarity can foster complacency – same old, same old… that’s a kind of rockiness. Preoccupation with other concerns can keep us from growing spiritual roots. An emotional climate of anger or anxiety or stress can keep our soil rocky.

What would you identify as the hot sun that causes the newly rooted plants to wither? Fear, anger, hatred… Also some of the enemies we named yesterday, like ambition, sorrow, overwork, stress. What are the “hot suns” in your life that cause your spirit to become scorched and withered?

Are you feeling robust or withered as a spiritual person today? Might you walk that path with Jesus in your imagination and let him show you where you are today – on the path, on the rocks, in the deep soil? What does he suggest you do? I remember once being deep in prayer on a retreat. In the prayer time, I sensed Jesus say to me, “I want you to come be with me every morning, to water your roots.” That’s partly why I named this Water Daily.

And what shall we do for those whom we see withering spiritually? Help transplant them into deeper soil, provide shade in the form of spiritual friendship - and sprinkle liberally with the Living Water gushing inside you, the Holy Spirit who renews all things in Christ.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here.  Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.