NACR Daily Meditation - October

[bluidkiti]

October 1

He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
Isaiah 42:2-3


Cheer up! Snap out of it! I thought you would be better by now! What's your problem?!

When we have been badly bruised, we have an increased sensitivity to noise. Comments like these - which many of us have heard even from people who genuinely love and care for us - are a kind of 'noise' during recovery. Because we have been bruised, these comments often feel like 'shouts' or 'raised voices in the street.' They are a kind of public shaming because of our inadequacies and neediness. And this feels like it will do us in - like the tiny recovery candle that we have just managed to light is being snuffed out by the wind of the shout.

And so when God responds with gentleness we are surprised. No shouting. No yelling. No hurrying to get better. Instead, we find compassion and tenderness. Our Healer sees that we are like a bruised reed. God will not break us. God will patiently restore us. God sees we are like a smoldering wick, ready to go out. Others might give up on us. But God will work with us until we burn brightly again.

Gentleness. Patience. Persistence. We need all three. These are the gifts offered to us by our healing God.


I am bruised, Lord.
I am smoldering.
And, I am so accustomed to shouting.
It's so noisy that I don't always hear your voice.
I don't expect your gentle ways.
I expect you to yell, to be impatient.
I expect you to give up on me.
But you do not yell.
You are not impatient.
You do not give up.
Thank you.
Gentle Healer, teach me to be gentle.
Teach me to be compassionate with myself and with others.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 2

I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely.
Hosea 14:4


Waywardness is a turning away from what is in our best interest and following depraved, capricious inclinations. There are many ways in which waywardness can be expressed. Some of us are openly rebellious. We flaunt our wild behavior and laugh at God. Others of us are quietly wayward. We try to appear compliant and good but we are self-reliant and defiantly independent.

No matter how we express our waywardness it is a destructive force in our lives. In our attempts to protect ourselves from any further pain we turn away from God and from others who love us. We shut them out. And we shut out their love. As a result, we close ourselves off from what we want and need most desperately in life - to be known and loved.

God promises to heal our waywardness. God understands that our turning away is the result of some deep wound in us. God sees this. God knows. God promises to heal us by loving us freely. When we close the doors of our heart, God does not stop loving us. Instead God continues to love us generously and completely. God will love us freely until our fears are gone and our defenses can come down. God will love us freely so that one day we will be able to give up our waywardness and allow ourselves the joy of being loved.


Heal my waywardness, Lord.
When I turn away from you,
love me so that I will return to you again.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 3

The Lord your God is with you he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight
in you, he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17


God comforts and takes joy in his children. We are like infants in his arms. God delights in us, quiets us with his love, and sings for joy over us.

It may be very difficult to imagine God so full of joy over you. This image is especially difficult for people who have been abandoned physically or emotionally by parents. You may have been unwanted. You may have been criticized and rejected. You may have been abused at the hands of the people you needed most to comfort you.

But we are not unwanted by God. We will not be rejected or abused by God. God delights in us. God longs to quiet our agitation and anxiety with love. God is so glad we are alive. God sings for joy! The Creator of the Universe takes such delight in us and sings for joy!


Do you delight in me, God?
Are you glad I'm alive?
You amaze me!
Help me, Father God,
to experience your protection.
Help me, Mother God,
to experience your nurture.
Quiet my anxious heart.
Sing to me, God.
Sing your songs of joy to me until I am quieted with your love.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 4

The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
Isaiah 40:28


There are times during our struggle to heal when our emotions become intense and stay intense for what seems like a very long time. We feel like we rant and rave and weep for hour after hour, day after day. And we worry that the people in our lives who love and support us will grow tired and weary. Will we wear them out? Will they grow tired of the journey?

In those times when we fear the limits of those who love us, we need to remind ourselves that the Everlasting God does not grow tired or weary. We can pour our heart out to God over and over again. We can rage and weep. God listens without hurry or exhaustion. God will not tire of us.

And God understands. Beyond what we can understand or fathom, God sees and knows and understands.

We need to keep talking to the people who support us, but with an appreciation for their limits and boundaries. We also need to talk to God. We can speak our heart freely and fully to our Creator every day, every hour. God will not tire of us.


It sounds silly when I say it, Lord.
but sometimes I worry that I will wear you out.
Or bore you.
But you are Everlasting God.
Creator of the ends of the earth.
You do not grow weary.
Your understanding cannot be fathomed.
You understand.
You do not tire of me.
Thank you.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 5

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms and
carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.
Isaiah 40:11


The Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth, is pictured many times in the Bible as a Shepherd God. This may not be shocking to modern readers - most of us don't know much about sheep herding beyond the few sentimental ideas we may have about rural life. But nothing was more ordinary in biblical times than sheep herding. It was a dirty job. It was a low prestige job. A shepherd lived with his sheep. Day and night he was with them, paying attention to their needs, providing protection, and guiding them.

For the little ones in the flock, the most vulnerable ones, there was often a need for individual care and attention. In times of special need or danger, the shepherd would seek them out, lift them into his arms and carry them close to his heart.

This is how God cares for us. God is a God of gentleness, of tender affection, of protection, and of nurture. Our God is a Shepherd God. When we feel afraid or vulnerable, God is aware of our need. We are gathered into God's arms. We are carried close to God's heart.


I am your lamb, Lord
The wolves are not far off.
Pick me up and hold me in your arms.
Carry me close to your heart.
Allow me to experience the mystery of being held by your loving arms.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 6

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power
through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith.
Ephesians 3:16


Sometimes recovery is exhausting. Sometimes we feel like a raw nerve all the way down to the core of our being. You can't touch anything without causing pain. In times like this we see clearly that our healing must be from the inside out. Nothing superficial will be of any consequence. We need our 'inner being', our 'heart', to experience God's healing power.

It is clear from this text that God understands where our healing must take place. The Spirit seeks to strengthen us in our 'inner being'. Christ seeks to dwell in our 'hearts'. God is not interested in appearances. God is not interested in performances. It is not God's plan for us to 'look good'. God's work will be deeper and necessarily more painful than this. The transformation we need will take place at the core of our being.

This may seem impossibly difficult to us. But it is not impossible for God. It is out of 'his glorious riches' that God can strengthen us. God is not helpless in the face of our brokenness. God is a resource-full God.


I have worked hard to look good on the outside, Lord.
But, it has done no good.
It hasn't worked.
I am not what I appear to be.
I need to heal from the inside.
Only you can do that, Lord.
Come Holy Spirit, to my inner being.
Come Christ, dwell in my heart.
Heal and strengthen me in the depths of my person.
Out of your riches, strengthen me.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 7

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he
asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then though you are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father
in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:9-11


Our children ask regularly for bread, milk, cereal and every other kind of food in the house. We delight in their appetite and their growth and development. It is pleasurable for us to provide the basic good things they need to be nourished and sustained physically.

Jesus uses the simple joys of parenting to make a point about God. Just like parents enjoy providing for their children, God is eager to provide good things for us. God is a good parent. God delights in our growth, development and nurture.

But God is not a codependent parent. God wants us to ask directly for the things we need. The importance of asking comes from the fact that it requires us to acknowledge our need. We have learned to deny our needs. We have learned to act as if we can take care of ourselves. As a result, we have a difficult time both asking God for good things and trusting God to respond.

Most of us begin with the struggle to identify our needs and to put them into words. After this we struggle to acknowledge that these needs can't be met with our own resources. And finally, we struggle to come to God and to trust God to be a giver of good gifts.


Lord, I acknowledge to you today that I have many needs.
I cannot take care of these needs on my own.
I turn to you for help.
Giver of Good Gifts, hear my prayer.
I am in need of what only you can give.
Help me to trust you today.
Help me to rest in the promise that you desire to give good gifts.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[frshncln]

Thank You

[bluidkiti]

October 8

I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love;
I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them.
Hosea 11:4


We have all experienced a variety of leadership styles. Unfortunately we are most familiar with either the chaotic leadership of leaders-who-don't-lead or the rigid leadership of leaders-who-control-inappropriately.

Because we are so familiar with these dysfunctional leadership styles, we may not always expect God's leadership to be helpful. Sometimes we worry that God cannot be trusted to lead effectively in times of crisis or uncertainty. But God does not appear to have uncertainties about the role of Leader. God will lead us. God is familiar with this territory. God has charted these waters. God knows how to find water holes in this desert. God can find trails in this trackless wasteland. God can be trusted to lead.

God will lead us, but God will not lead with heavy-handed-ness and control. God does not lead using threats and punishments. God leads us with kindness and with love.

God is pictured in this text as a nurturing, attentive, kind parent. God lifts the burden off our back. God bends down and feeds us. We can trust God to lift from us the 'yokes' that bind us. God will feed us. God will lead us with love.


Burden-lifter, give me strength today.
God-of-Nurture, give me nourishment today.
Lead me with kindness.
Tie me to you with love.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 9

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory
of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and
animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:23


We do not take wood or stones and make idols. We do not pray to statues or prepare food for idols to eat.

It is not with our hands but with our imaginations that we carve out little gods to worship. Just like those who carve out idols with their hands, we make little gods out of our fear and ignorance. Our fundamental problem is that we imagine a God that comes out of our human experience. We imagine God to be like the people we have known in our lives. If we have been raised with impossible expectations, we may find ourselves worshipping the god-of-impossible-expectations. If we have been neglected, we may find ourselves in the service of the god-who-does-not-care. Since these gods do not respond to us when we call, we work harder and harder to please them. We try to be good. We try to be religious. But, we can never do enough. In this way we trade the 'glory of the immortal God' for the very dysfunctional images which arise from our experiences with 'mortal men'.

The good news is that God is not the way we expect. The one true God, the immortal God, is a glorious God. God is a compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love and mercy.


Lord, you can see how I cling to my little gods.
I have tried so hard to please them.
But, they are harsh and abusive.
I cannot please them.
But I can't seem to get rid of them either.
They are awful little gods, but they are all I know.
I have grown accustomed to them.
I have adapted my expectations to match their smallness.


I am weary to death of the gods who come from shame, Lord.
I long to worship you, God of Grace.
I long to worship You.
You are the God of Glory.
Give me eyes to see you more clearly today.
Give me a heart that hopes in you.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 10

I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice
and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.
Jeremiah 9:24


God delights in kindness, justice and righteousness. None of this is easy for us to believe.

Kindness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we do not have extensive personal experience with kindness. We can imagine God as a weak, codependent, ineffective being whose specialty is being relentlessly nice to people. But what of the God who exercises kindness? What would that look like?

Justice is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with justice. In dysfunctional families justice is either chaotic or completely absent. But what of the God who exercises justice? What would that look like?

Righteousness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with righteousness. We do not have instincts for doing what is right, we do not delight in doing righteousness, we expect it to be boring, dreary and out-of-date. We may delight in caretaking and codependent niceness, but is that the same as delighting in righteousness? Probably not. So, what of the God who exercises righteousness. What would that look like?

God is capable of delight. God is not the Unmoved One. God is the Most Moved of us all. God's compassion and kindness are free and full. God's commitment to justice is beyond all our imaginations. God pursues righteousness.

Learning to share in God's struggle for kindness, justice and righteousness will require significant changes for us. It cannot be done in a one time event. It will be a life-time quest. We will forget and remember again. We will run away and come back again. But each day in the struggle we will grow in our capacity for delight. Until, in the end, when God's purposes are complete, we will be filled with delight at the triumph of God's kindness, justice and righteousness


God of kindness, I want to understand you better.
God of justice, I want to live in solidarity with you.
God of righteousness, help me to delight in what pleases you.
Increase my capacity for delight, Lord.
Let me discover you afresh today.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 11

They tell how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
1 Thessalonians 1:9


It is remarkably easy for us to grow accustomed to false gods. We can develop a bizarre security in trying to please a god-who-will-not-be-pleased. We persist in the belief that if we keep trying, and keep working and keep attempting to control ourselves, we may finally be acceptable to our idol-god. But the trying and working and attempting to control never seem to work. Instead, we find ourselves re-enacting old family dramas. We find ourselves ever more deeply entrenched in shame, blame, rejection and self-loathing.

A remarkable thing can happen when we turn from our idols, from our false little gods, to serve the living and true God. It doesn't happen all at once. But gradually we unclench our tight fists. We open our closed hearts. We take in light. We take in love. It is like coming outside after being in a small, dark room. We walk outside and feel overwhelmed by the richness of the sky and land around us. We thought God was small and dreary. And we discover instead vastness and warmth.

The call to turn from our idols to the living and true God is a daily call. The old, idol-gods will draw us back. We need to leave them over and over again. We need to turn again and again to the God who seeks to liberate us from their bondage.


I turn to you again today, God.
You are the Living and True God.
I leave my idol-gods again today.
I renounce the god-of-impossible expectations.
He is not God.
I renounce the god-who-is-eager-to-punish.
He is not God.
I renounce the god-who-keeps-his-distance.
He is not God.
I turn myself again today to you,
Living and True God.
I turn myself to you.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 12

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,
so that you may know him better.
Ephesians 1:17

Paul kept asking God that his friends would be able to know God better. He clearly did not think of the Christian life as a one-time event. This text assumes that to become a Christian is to enter a lifetime process of learning to see and know God better.

The two things needed for this process are wisdom and revelation. Wisdom is something internal. During recovery the Spirit works within us to make us wise. This involves weeding out all of the distorted ideas and distorted thinking processes which supported our denial system. The Spirit is capable of removing our 'stinking thinking' and making us wise. The second thing we need in the recovery process is revelation. Revelation is external to us - it is God's self-disclosure to us. Without an external frame of reference, we are perfectly capable of creating a reality of our own choosing. Our denial is capable of creating a comprehensive alternate reality with no external checks or balances. During recovery, the Spirit works to reveal to us what is true, what is real. As a result we gradually learn that there is a reality beyond our pretense and denial.

The purposes of the Spirit's work is to help us grow in our capacity to know God. The goal is not just knowing lots of facts about God. To know a person is to share life with that person. It is a quest of the heart. As our wounded hearts are changed, we will be empowered to know God better.

I need wisdom. Lord.
Help me to be wise.
I need revelation, Lord.
Show me.
Let me see.
Spirit of Wisdom
Spirit of Revelation
Fill my heart today
So that I may
know you better.
Amen

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 13

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying
in a manger. . .and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said
to them.
Luke 2:12, 18


Some people think of God as a monster. Others think of God as the bully-in-the-sky. Others think of God as remote and abstract. These images come readily to us. We would not find it difficult to invent these gods. We are not amazed by them.

Like those who heard the shepherd's report, however, we stand amazed at the Christian Image. The image of a vulnerable God, a God-in-human-flesh, does not come readily to us. Who would have ever invented this God who comes as an infant? Who would have ever dared to think such a thing of God? But this is The Story, The Image. Christians have always insisted that the central drama of the history of this planet is centered on this God-who-comes-as-an-infant.

Things have not changed since the shepherds shared the amazing news. Being a Christian still involves staying open to the possibility that God will surprise us today. Just as God surprised the shepherds that day, so God may surprise us today.

Staying open to the possibility that God will surprise us with good things is not easy for people like us who find it easier to expect bad things. But God surprises us again and again with good things. The same God who came as a baby, wrapped up, lying in a feeding trough continues to surprise us.


What a surprise you are, God!
I expected monster, bully, distant abstraction.
What a surprise you are, Infant-God!
Help me this day to be open to your surprising grace.
Help me this day to be open to your surprising love.
Help me this day to hope in you.
Help me to allow my deep longings for you to awaken.
So that I will not miss your surprises.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan

[bluidkiti]

October 14

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror;
then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12

As we open ourselves to see and know God in new ways, we will need to guard against using our relationship with God as a new arena for expressing our perfectionism. We cannot now see God except in a 'poor reflection'. We cannot perfectly know God. We are not yet face to face with God. We see partially. We know partially. There is much that remains a mystery to us.

It is not easy for us to live with partial vision. It is difficult to tolerate the ambiguities and unknowns. Sometimes the imperfections in our understanding of God make us anxious. We feel that God expects more of us than that. We feel that we should have answers to every conceivable question, that we should never experience doubts, that we should have clarity at all times.

But this text makes it clear that 20:20 vision is not a realistic expectation in our relationship with God. Perfection is not an option for us. Accepting limits in our capacity to see and know God is part of getting to know God better.


The list of things I don't understand goes on and on, Lord.
What I don't know makes me anxious.
I am afraid of my doubts.
I want to see and know you so well that I no longer experience doubt.
I want to understand things so thoroughly, that I no longer experience anxiety.
But I cannot see you face to face. I only see and know in part.
Help me, Lord,
to find a way to live with uncertainty,
with doubts,
with anxiety.
Help me to embrace what you have revealed of your love and goodness.
And to live in anticipation of one day knowing you more fully.
Amen.

Dale and Juanita Ryan