REFLECTIONS
Insights from God’s Word into Today’s World
Whether you are walking around the neighbourhood or hiking in the mountains, walking awakens your life with Christ as it revives body and soul. God Walk explores walking as spiritual formation, walking as healing, walking as exercise, walking as prayer, walking as pilgrimage, suffering, friendship, attentiveness, and more . . .alongside the God who, incarnate in Jesus, turns to us as he passes by‒always on foot‒and says simply, “Come, follow me.”
In a world which values “hustle culture” and idolizes the concept of being as busy and productive as possible, it would seem that being still and alone with God would come as a superfluous luxury. However, as is often said, Jesus is completely counter-cultural. In fact, if one were to observe Jesus’ life, one would be deeply challenged by his example in retreating to be alone with God. Join us as we look how we can follow in Jesus’ steps in meeting alone with God.
As we start our journey of experimenting with the means of grace, we will look to pray and learn to “riff off” of the Lord’s Prayer. We will post some thoughts from John Smed’s book, ‘Journey in Prayer’, regarding each line of the Lord’s prayer to help you plug in to the heart of Jesus behind this prayer.
The phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness” is often mistakenly assumed to originate from the Bible. While it does not emanate from the Bible, there is some truth to it. During the threat of the coronavirus, good hygiene has been vehemently and correctly advocated as the best means of preventative care against infection. The CDC recommends that one wash their hands for a minimum of 20 seconds. In a little experiment, we saw this correlates roughly to the same time it takes to recite the Lord’s Prayer. It would be remiss of us to not take this opportunity to invest in both our physical and our spiritual hygiene. As we explore what it means to be spiritually healthy, we turn our focus to Jesus as he teaches His disciples to pray.
In the light of this past Sunday’s message on enhancing our prayer life at a time like this and, in particular, on using the Psalms to enrich our prayers, I want to share three things with you today. The first article is a thought-provoking article by N.T. Wright, Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To. The second article is some teaching on the subject from Christopher Ash, Teaching Psalms; Volume2: From text to message, which invites us to see Christ in every Psalm. The third is a resource from Tim Keller which looks at cultivating discipline in prayer.
