E&W 9-22-13

Sacred Story

Encouragements & Wisdom: September 22, 2013

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If you prefer to read offline, you can also download:
Encouragements and Wisdom: September 22, 2013 (PDF).

E & W reflections are additional helps for your Sacred Story prayer journey. Reflect on them at week’s beginning or outside of your 15-minute prayer periods.

The Affirmations

The pathway to God’s peace and healing runs through
my heart’s brokenness, sin, fear, anger and grief.
 

The human story was forever transformed when our first parents made the choice to turn their hearts from God. This sin, apart from ending our immortality, broke our hearts and robbed us of peace. The world of perfect relationship ended and the world of broken relationships is inaugurated. When perfect relationship ends, we are opened to grief, shame and anger.

But God would not tolerate the destruction of his beautiful creation and his beautiful creatures made in the Divine image. He sets about the grand rescue operation that culminates in the birth of the Messiah. It is the Lord Jesus who enters into our broken world and into the chaos and darkness of the evil occasioned by our choice to reject God. Indeed, He bears the full weight of the destruction of the relational world and is consumed by it as He enters our experience of abandonment—“And about three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27: 46).

If you want to be holy, you must allow the Divine Physician to enter into your sinfulness, brokenness, fear, anger and grief—all that relates to the imperfect, unbeautiful and shameful dimensions of your human experience. It is the Divine Physician’s intention to transform the ugliness of our sin and grief into blessings and peace. The Father transformed the scandal of the cross into our resurrection. Christ will transform the scandal and shame of our brokenness into our joy and our hope.

Always examine fears and the way they seek to manipulate you. God is not the author of fear. Evil is the author of fear. Awaken to fear’s destructive ways and Be Not Afraid. Trust in the Lord always!

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to let you into the brokenness of our hearts and history. By your grace working in the wounds of our lives, we believe you will transform them into a Sacred Story and in this we may praise you forever in
Creation, Presence, Memory, Mercy and Eternity.

He raises up the lowly from the dust;
from the dunghill he lifts up the poor
to seat them with princes,
with the princes of his own people.
Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.

(Psalm 113: 7-8)

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