For a fleeting moment the heavens opened, and God’s glory spilled forth. Time itself gave way, the ancient prophets Moses and Elijah come to converse with Jesus. Hearing this account two millennia later, I feel as if the entirety of the Gospels has collapsed into this one moment in time, fragments of encounters swirling in torrents of light. 
 
Hovering behind Peter’s wild desire to hold onto the moment, I see Jesus in a garden gently telling Mary Magdalene not to cling to him. Listen to my son, says a voice from a cloud, and I see spit and mud and a deaf man who can suddenly hear and be heard. Ephphatha! Be opened! Rise, says Jesus, and Peter comes to him across the water, a paralyzed man rolls up his mat, and a young girl gets up from her death bed. 
 
And always, do not be afraid. Resounding over and over. On a storm-wracked sea. To a worried father. To his disciples gathered for one last meal. To the multitudes. To all of us.

 
I wonder what the conversation was as Jesus walked Peter, James and John down the mountain. Or perhaps I don’t, for all these Gospel stories end the same way. We want to cling to the God of glory, to fall at the feet of the divine.
 
Instead, Jesus reaches for us in the dust and says, get up. Be opened, that you might hear my voice, that you might be my voice. And above all, do not fear. Walk with me and be transfigured. Walk with me and transfigure the world.
 
From Give Us This Day August 2023 by Michelle Francl-Donnay

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

1 Peter 1:3-5  (continued)

 “This inheritance is kept in heaven for you…”

Peter was writing to Christians who were facing persecution, the forfeiture of property, exclusion from society, loss of status and everyday freedoms. If we are faithful to Jesus it may well cost us too. Peter’s point is that our salvation, our security in God, our status as children of God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—whatever else we lose, we can never lose our place in God’s love, and our hope in Christ. What we have received in Christ, all the graces and gifts of salvation are under the lock and key of heaven, guarded by the eternal promises of God.

“who through faith are shielded by God’s power…”

In case we missed it, God not only guards and keeps all he has promised to those who are in Christ; but because we live in Christ by faith, we also are shielded by the power of God. An older translation says “we are kept by the power of God.” A shield is only effective when it comes between the heart and danger. The Psalmist even calls God a shield, One who protects and defends when the heart is under siege. 

“until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”

Outside the discourse of the Church, the word salvation is hardly ever used these days. But it is a key word of Christian life." It contains the ideas of rescue from danger, healing from illness, deliverance from the threat of death and entering into a state of well-being. We are born anew into a living hope, so that in faith we look forward to the final revelation of all that God plans for the new creation in Christ. So we live in anticipation, but we do so secure and “kept by the power of God.”

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Read the whole text again and allow your mind and heart to follow its rhythms. Another word hardly used outside church is ‘Doxology.’ Literally, it means to speak words of glory, to give God glory. 

It seems right to finish with perhaps the most frequently sung four-line verse in English hymns:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. I Peter 1:3

“Praise be to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s where Christian worship, prayer and faithful existence start—with praise. Not our requests and needs, but the heart recognition of who God is and all that God has done through our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter will go on to spell that out in the rest of the text. But impulsive, self-asserting and outspoken Peter has learned to put first things first. Praise is the music of a heart set free to live and love in the grace of God.

“In his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Mercy is love in action and always involves self-giving care for the other. Praise God, says Peter, for the gift of new life in Christ. Every believer lives with a forward look to hope-filled horizons, all of them illumined by the blazing reality of ‘the resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ The resurrection is the ultimate new beginning, the defeat of death by the life of God, the birth of hope from despair. By resurrection and the gift of new birth, God speaks a reverberating “Yes!” of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewal. 

“…and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.”

New birth, living hope, and now a God-given inheritance, with a triple lock guarantee! It is imperishable, unspoilable, and unfading. What God has given to us in Christ is to his resurrection. This new life and living hope, with all its blessings of peace with God, the gift of the Spirit, the renewal of the heart for service, are directly dependent on God’s power and mercy, and demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Christ. Our inheritance in Christ is encircled by grace!

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

You who are over us,
You who are one of us,
You who are also within us,
May all see you-in me also.
May I prepare the way for you,
May I thank you for all
that shall fall to my lot,
May I also not forget the needs of others.
Give me a pure heart-that I may see you.
A humble heart-that I may hear you,
A heart of love-that I may serve you,
A heart of faith-that I may abide in you. Amen.
 
Dag Hammarskold, Markings.

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Henri Nouwen’s Can you Drink the Cup? is among the half dozen or so classic books of Christian Spirituality that I've read and pondered regularly for years. Call it my devotional canon. Such reading isn't informational but formational and transformational; these books, along with Scripture, nourish my theological imagination, sustain spiritual passion, recall dissipated affections to a new focus, touch me in those deep recesses of love and hopefulness about myself.

Sometimes folks ask how I get the time to do all the reading I do. Here's part of the answer. How we love God and follow faithfully after our Lord will be different for each of us, as different as we are from each other. Not everyone finds reading brings them closer to God—though I think more could. But I am persuaded that good pastoral care includes among its goals enabling and encouraging our community to think, reflect, read and learn together of the wisdom to live for Christ faithfully and well. Many don't read deeply and slowly because no one has ever helped them make the connection between such reading and the way they view the world, their faith and the essential connections between our understanding of the world, our knowledge of God, our prayers, and the quality of our Christian faithfulness. 

Time for reading, time for work, time for the people at the heart of our lives, time for sleep, time for serving others, time for music, exercise, eating, TV—but in the end much of what we do with time comes down to choices, preferences, priorities and life circumstances. Some of the great Christian spiritual teachers had a fixed habit of 15 minutes a day for slow reading of classic spiritual texts. These Christian spiritual teachers approached their reading of classic texts with a 'give us this day our daily bread' urgency. They knew they needed nourishment, strength, energy, and they felt and befriended their hunger as a necessary inner reminder that they are not self-sustaining, or self-propelled or capable of growth without food. 

Food for the heart, the imagination, the conscience, the mind - food for thought, food for energy, food for strength, and thus, food to live. And for a quarter of an hour a day, week on week, month on month, year on year, they made time to slow down and wait in the company of Christ, learning from the cloud of witnesses what it is to be loved by God and to love God. And in that Love to understand more what it meant for them to be called to be part of God's mission to redeem and renew, to reconcile and restore a fallen but God-loved creation! 
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

These past few days I've been thinking. I do quite a lot of that. Live inside my own head, reflect on this and that, consider, ponder, worry, praise. Rehearse memories, imagine conversations, read, pray, give thanks, complain. Feel guilty or contented, uplifted or sad, impressed by beauty or depressed by brokenness; these and other emotional and intellectual puzzles are the colors and sounds of that world known only to me, and God. And in the most important sense, thankfully, known better to God than to me.

So how much of all of that inner noise and silence, searching and finding, that continuous flowing of thought and feeling that is the life I inhabit, how much of all this muchness of me is prayer? Do I pray or does God pray in me? Is prayer my seeking God or God seeking me? Is prayer indeed "the soul's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed"? As an introvert I hope so, because there is a lot of living goes on inside our own heads, and inside our own hearts, and much of it a shared secret between us and God. Interestingly I find that more reassuring than worrying: 

"O Lord, you have searched me and know me....you perceive my thoughts from afar...you are familiar with all my ways...before a word is on my lips you know it completely, O Lord."  Psalm 139:1-2

 Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. 

I do not see the road ahead of me. 

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think that I am following your will 

does not mean that I am actually doing so. 

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. 

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. 

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. 

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road 

though I may know nothing about it. 

Therefore will I trust you always 

though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. 

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Thomas Merton.

The integrity, honesty with self and radical trustfulness of this prayer have always moved me. Merton has been a companion all my Christian life - often quirky, sometimes annoying, wisely critical, funny without malice, passionate about justice and peace, compassionately humane, a lover of solitude and silence and one who found written communication irresistible. The prayer above comes from a heart that knows its limits and trusts a love that has no limits.

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Romans 15:13

We are living through a time when hope comes hard, when there seems to be a deficit of joy, and when peace would be a fine thing if the world could find it! But remember - it was the Spirit of God who brooded over the chaos, and by God’s word brought creation to be. That same Spirit of Life, is the One by whose power Christ was raised from the dead, and yes, that same Spirit pours love and hope into our hearts until they overflow. We are a people called to embody the hope of the Gospel, to enact and proclaim the love of God, to be ‘ministers of reconciliation and Christ’s blessed peacemakers. And all this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Why not try Romans 15:13 as the prayer to regularly start your day?    “May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace as we trust in him, so that we may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” AMEN

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. 

Psalm 91:5-8 

Life’s a battle. None of us escape the costs and consequences of being human, of living a life in which joy and sorrow, achievement and failure, wellbeing and suffering, safety and danger, all mix together in the everydayness of our stories. But around us and beneath us, above us and within us, is the God we have come to know in Christ. “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God!” We live under the shadow of the Almighty and Christ is our refuge and fortress. Whatever happens!

If you make the Most High your dwelling – even the Lord who is my refuge – then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.    

Psalm 91:9-10

Yes, bad things still happen to good people. This text is not a promise of immunity from pain and loss, suffering and hurt. But when life collapses beneath us, or we are in a hard place, we are held and surrounded by a Love that will never let us go. Jesus commanded his followers to “Abide in me”, to “Remain in my love”. That, for us is to “make the Most High our dwelling”. We are held safe in the power of the risen Lord in whom we trust, kept before the throne of God by our great High Priest who ever lives to make intercession for us.”

Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.  With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. 

Psalm 91:14-16

This is the Comprehensive Coverage offered to those who love and serve God, who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and who live under the shadow of the Almighty. We love because he first loved us, and so affirm our faith: “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” 
 Psalm 91:1-2 

This is a Psalm for challenging times. The Most High is the title for God “that cuts every threat down to size.” Almighty is the name for God’s sovereign power. Lord is the name given to Moses, the delivering and guiding God, “I AM!” All this is made personal by the Psalmist who uses the possessive case, My God. Our safety and security are found in a personal relationship with The Most High, "my God in whom I trust."

The metaphors for safety are equally rich and convincing. The shelter of the Most High; rest in the shadow of the Almighty; the Lord God as our refuge and fortress. These two verses put us in our place, “in the shadow of the Almighty.” No wonder Luther taught us to sing, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” We live in the shadow of the Almighty and within the encircling providence of God. This is the God of whom we say, “My God in whom I trust.”

Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. Psalm 91:3-4 

The rest of this Psalm could be called the Terms and Conditions of a comprehensive Life Policy! Whatever is a threat and to be feared is covered, quite literally, because we live under the protective wings of God’s faithful mercy and steadfast love. The shield and rampart give protection to those who are under siege – and we’ve all been there, besieged, when it seems everything is against us. But in our worst moments and tightest corners, God too, is there, our refuge…and strength.

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation