Lisa Colón DeLay | Spiritual Formation and the Way of the Desert Elders
Resources, Guidance, Products, and Services for personal growth, spiritual formation, and community connection
Topics pertain in some way to the unseen realm of Reality, the inner world, or the Divine, most often in a Christian and ecumenical context with the assumption that all people are in reality, beings with and of spirit.
(a personal reflection from Gospel Virtues by Jonathan R. Wilson)
Cosmic Hope: For all times, for all places, and all people, and nothing can take it away.
This idea “hope as story” is not sourced in a human story.
It creates the circumstances by which we may endure, and serve each other. (not a will to power)
It is found in community, personally, with Person, and eschatologically.
It is transcendent…
Strangely enough—It can be started through worship.
How might you define it?
Wouldn’t it be cool if God was a genie, and if you rubbed him the right way you could get your wildest dreams to come true?
Or maybe he could be like the Lotto, and you could hit the Jackpot with him, and a windfall of goodies could come your way, with no trouble at all.
Or God could be like a butler with supernatural body toning and skin enhancing skills to diminish the signs of aging and flabbiness.
Ah, God, the big vending machine in the sky…
Except-God asks us to be familiar in relationship to him like a spouse. He calls us his “Beloved.” Hum… conundrum…
Is the Get God-Get Rich idea perhaps a bit immature? Near-sighted?
Anyway, God is a Being described as a Person, right?
A friend of mine, Jon Acuff, has a hilarious post called “Secretly Believing in the Prosperity Gospel.” You’ll laugh out loud if you read it. His book, “Stuff Christians Like” is a great commentary on Christian sub-culture that will have you laughing non stop! (Especially if you were ever a preacher’s kid!)
Yes, for some of us–it’s getting depressing out there. The 10.2% unemployment rate is taking it’s toll. The number of people who are discouraged from looking for work pushes this number to over 17%.
It looks like “Change We Can Believe In” might have to be a kind of diaper change, because the whole package has gotten a bit soggy with, well, you know.
I want to encourage something that’s hard to come up with right now. Hope. Now, I Know we were offered “hope,” or having audacity of hope, about a year ago, okay more than a year ago, but I’m talking about something entirely different-A different perspective of the thing we term “hope.”
Hope really doesn’t come from someone’s promises, or vision-casting. It doesn’t come from having prosperity, or a cleaner environment. It actually comes from aligning/joining our own hope with a Hope that comes from something outside all of us.
The Source of goodness, the Source of Love, the Source of Hope itself, is not just something to pin a fragile string of our hope to, like a shinny balloon that sails into the sky, and makes us feel better.
It’s very much stronger than that. Ultimate Hope, Love, Goodness, is a person. The ideal we think of, with such things, is such because there is an origin to each one, in the first place. We wouldn’t even know about ultimate Hope, unless there was an Eternal Mind to be it, and eminent it, to begin with.
So really, our hope transcends circumstances. Good news, indeed!
And yet, we can do much to change some of our circumstances. When we are given a soggy diaper full of, you know what, we can start a change we can believe in.
Stay strong. Keep your confidence going.
Register to vote.
And remember that Hope is never truly found in a person, or circumstance.
It seems like with too much work, we get in too little worship. Our priorities push it to the side, out of the main focus. That just our relationship with God suffers, but so do all the other ones, right? Family, friends, and neighbors get less of us. And, what’s left over it’s really our best. Sometimes, it’s our worst. We can be frustrated, exhausted, anxious, or pre-occupied. We’ll take phone calls, instead of carving out time for them. We’ll miss meals, or events because of the demands of our high-paced work-style, which has become a full-blown life-style. Time to unwind, do nothing, or just really enjoy something like a sunset, a wonderful meal, a walk, or talk with the son or daughter, is pushed far into the margins, most of the time, overshadowed by a hectic schedule, and work, work, work.
My pastor brought this sort of thing up today. Yes, some jobs automatically come with a heap of obligations. But, when our living becomes much more about getting things done, than it is about being, in truth, we are robbing ourselves of life itself.
How fascinating that the Hebrew root word for work and worship turn out to be the SAME thing. “Avodah” This suggests that our work isn’t something different than worship, as we typically treat it. Everything we do when we work can be done as a worship practice. Work is offered as worship, and a pleasing sacrifice to God. Perhaps this way, it won’t be so much of a curse to our selves either. Maybe this way, we will make better boundaries because it is in God’s realm. He wishes for us to have abundant life, rest, peace, even as we work at our best for him.
Leave your comments, please :)
God,
Today is Tuesday.
I feel small in the world.
In the little things I do, be with me, near me, and hold me dear.
Let me not forget your faithfulness, your grace, your power, your love.
Show me, my God–or help me glimpse–that your ways,
and your plan, are beyond my sight.
(But, that isn’t so I should worry, but so I can rely on you, and trust.)
If you are not all together good, then good does not exist.
But since I know what good is at all, surely I know you some.
Breathe into me your breath of life, and let me know you more.
When Tuesday seems like a small day, with nothing to offer,
show me that you delight in me,
just because I am yours.
Surely, you are mine.
Sincerely, with love,
Your girl,
Lisa