Monday Meditation

Monday Meditation: 

God of everything seen and unseen,

You fill our hearts with love

and our souls with joy.

You make us want to shout praises

in Your name

from the highest mountain tops

so all the world might hear and know of

Your compassion,

Your tolerance,

Your inventive nature,

Your playful creativity,

and the infinite nearness of Your love.

We come now in silent reverence

to feel the nearness of You.

[pause for silent meditation]

Yet while we so want the world

to know You more intimately,

we must also remember that

in order for us to exalt Your name,

we first have to listen for and hear Your voice.

We just need to be still and quiet now and then.

In fact, we need to be still and quiet more often.

We live in a noisy world,

with products and pitchmen

and ads tempting us with

shiny new objects

all vying for our attention.

Our instinct is to shout louder,

to pitch You and Your merciful love

over and against

the materialism of our age.

But this just causes us to fall

into lockstep with the product pitchmen,

and causes anyone who might listen for Your voice

to shut us out,

shut You out,

shut Your message out,

just as quickly as they change channels

from one commercial to another.

You can never be a commercial,

Wondrous and wonderful God of all creation!

You are more than a product to sell to others.

You are the life-force of the universe,

the consciousness of our very existence,

the conscience of our humanity—

and You deserve more respect

than to be treated like just another product

sitting on the shelf,

in between the ice cream and the iPhone.

We beg Your forgiveness

for treating You like a commodity,

and come to you now in silent reverence.

[pause for silent meditation]

We send You our joys and concerns silently,

listening for Your voice.

We don’t need to tell You what we need.

By listening and connecting,

our thoughts become Your thoughts,

our hopes become Your hopes,

our loved ones come under Your care.

We pray only to connect with Your presence,

and we pray in silent reverence.

Amen.

Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1

The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.

Thought for the Day: I’ve always found this to be an interesting story. I doubt the word of the Lord was rare. God is constantly speaking; one need only look around the world to hear God’s beautiful voice in the wonder of nature. God speaks through the stars, through the formation of galaxies, through a bee gathering honey and a blade of grass wet with morning dew. God is revealed in the small courtesies of strangers. God is constantly speaking.

The problem is that, like Samuel in this story, we’re not actively listening. We don’t genuinely expect to hear God speak to us—that’s something reserved for Moses or Jesus or Mohammed! This is a dangerous misperception, and it’s also somewhat of a cop-out. If the voice of God is only reserved for “special” people, then my responsibility to God (and through God to the world) is alleviated. We think, “I’m not special, why would God want to talk to me?” and we breathe a sigh of relief, because who needs the responsibility of a Noah or a Buddha? We might actually be a little afraid to listen for God, because deep down we know it will change our lives forever.

Our hearing problem has been exacerbated by the progress of science and technology. It’s hard to believe in an underlying consciousness to reality, much less believe that conscious presence might want to communicate with us—might actually care about us, when we understand creation on a sub-molecular level. But that’s because religions still generally portray God on a macro, rather than micro-level. God is out there doing things. Yet the science of Quantum Physics itself seems to be a communication from God, a message we can receive now that we do understand the natural world more deeply. And that message, if we’ll only listen for it, is this: “I AM still speaking, and I AM with you, more intimately than you have ever imagined. I AM all there is, was, or ever will be. I AM you and your neighbor, the trees in your backyard and the stars in the sky. I AM the atoms and the stuff that makes the atoms. I AM conscious, and you are conscious because I AM.”

Prayer: Open my ears to Your voice, my heart to Your love, and my mind to the possibility that there is more to the universe than meets my ears or my eyes.  Amen.

Scripture: Mark 12:29

[Jesus said] “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Thought for the Day: When we hear the voice of God, we immediately realize oneness. Hearing God happens not through our ears, but through every fiber of our being. Hearing God is a sub-molecular experience that awakens us to a greater, expanded awareness of reality. It changes everything about us, especially the way we perceive each other and the world around us. Oneness with God changes the way we love, and in fact changes the very meaning of love. When we hear God and listen, we take life, and the lives of our fellow human beings, more seriously. We take love more seriously. We take God more seriously.

When we sit silently and listen for God, we tune every bit of our being into a receiver for God’s still, small voice. Once heard, it is impossible to deny Oneness with the universe. This is why Jesus declares that our most important task is to love God with all our heart, soul and mind—with everything we’ve got, because everything we’ve got is God.

Prayer: My one, my everything, help me realize my deep connection with You, and through You, my deep connection with others. May this realization change the way I relate to my fellow human beings, and help us all become aware of our innate connectedness with each other, through the reality of Your loving being. Amen.

Scripture: Matthew 11:15

Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Thought for the Day: When we hear and listen to the still, small voice of God, we are tasked to walk a different path. This puts us at odds with the rest of the world, every time. Earlier in this passage Jesus spoke of John the Baptist, whom the world rejected because he refused to sing and dance to their materialistic songs. Hermits don’t do well in public places, after all.

Yet, Jesus has also been rejected, only this time for being a little too friendly with the ways of the world. People didn’t approve of Jesus’ gallivanting about with prostitutes and tax collectors. In both cases, the larger society didn’t bother to learn anything about John the Baptist or Jesus. They are judged purely from a distance, based on appearances. The world is very good at judging appearances.

When we hear and actually listen to God, our actions are different. So there will always be people who think we’re too this or not enough that. Religious people will make up rules and regulations and claim we’re not religious enough because we enjoy a glass of wine or a dance now and then. They and the secular world will reject us because we feel called to serve on the edges of society where Jesus served. They’ll point fingers at us as we drive a prostitute to pick up pampers for her baby, or give a junkie a loving embrace to let him know he’s not alone in this cruel, judgmental world.

The secular world will reject us because we do our best to uphold God’s values of justice and equality for all, protesting against the corrupt power elite ruining our governments and corporations, driving the world deeper into economic and political collapse as they clutch greedily at their billions of dollars—dollars made at the expense of we, the people.

Our calling as people who listen for and hear God is to ignore the finger pointers. We are to care for the poor and wretched. We are to fight for economic justice by protesting unfair wage and labor systems. We are to love our enemies, even as they hurl bombs in our direction. We are to take a cue from John the Baptist and disengage from the ways of the world, but also remember Jesus, and stay in the world enough to loudly proclaim God’s new way.

Prayer: Shut my mouth and still my angry hands, good and loving Lord! Interrupt our noisy, hateful clamor and caress us with the voice of peace, understanding, love and hope, so that we might find the courage to be Your voice in this too wretched world. Amen.