Ordinary Time

Pause

Start by placing your feet firmly on the ground

and placing your palms facing up on your lap

like you’re ready to catch something.

When you breathe in, receive God’s love into every inch of your body, mind, and heart.

When you breathe out, share God’s love into a world which desperately needs that love.

Take a deep breath—in and out.
And another one—in and out.
And one more—in and out.

Be at peace.

Listen

So don’t be ashamed of the testimony about the Lord or of me, his prisoner. Instead, share the suffering for the good news, depending on God’s power. God is the one who saved and called us with a holy calling. This wasn’t based on what we have done, but it was based on his own purpose and grace that he gave us in Christ Jesus before time began. Now his grace is revealed through the appearance of our savior, Christ Jesus. He destroyed death and brought life and immortality into clear focus through the good news.

2 Timothy 1:8-10

Think

Even though I am a pastor and studied theology in college and seminary, I’m not entirely sure about the specifics of how Jesus’s death destroys death, but I believe it with every fiber of my being. Jesus’s destruction of death means that the powers of death and darkness — injustice, war, violence, racism, homophobia, and so on — don’t get the last word after all, no matter how strong they appear to be in life. When I read the news of wars here and mass shootings there, I take great encouragement that these things which are so clearly not of Jesus cannot win against the love and the justice of God.

Our faith — and the faith of the whole church — rests on a belief that God, in Christ, died and was raised again from the dead. When we align ourselves with the life and the will of God, we too must let our sinful selves die and be raised again as agents of God’s mission of reconciliation, justice, and peace.

Cody Maynus

Pray

God of Easter mornings, you raised Jesus from the dead and put an end to death and injustice once and for all. Inspire us to unashamedly become reconcilers and justice-bearers in the world, so that we, like Jesus, can spread life wherever we go. Amen.

Go

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery in Anne of Green Gables (1908)

As you move into the realities of your daily life, go into the deep woods of your imagination, look up, up, up into the sky of your heart, and feel a prayer.