Thursday, March 11
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Coming Full Circle: The Prayer of Recollection
I've been noticing lately that the disciplines I have been taught over recent years seem to be making the move from my head to my heart. I sat down recently with "The Prayer of Recollection," affirming to my soul and to God that I am not Him, that I cannot please, fix or serve everybody, and that at the deepest core of my being I am clothed only in the righteousness of God, and deeply long for communion with Him.
Having prayed this prayer with my mouth many times throughout many seasons, I put it down about two years ago because I had to admit that I didn't understand it. "What do you mean I'm not defined by what I do?" was the honest question of my heart. I was in a season of questions, of feeling much failure, and of frustration, and all I could do for quite some time was to simply call out my need to God. I felt altogether un-holy and at a loss for how to approach God in a manner that would bear any sort of fruit.
God has brought me through this particular time of questioning (not to say I’m finished with questions!) and has allowed me to see once again the goodness of God in the land of the living. As I was sitting with my friend at her breakfast table the other day, it dawned on me. The last few years have literally been the lived experience of the prayer of recollection. Every way that I have defined myself, gone. I spent months wrestling with who I actually am, and could only come to the conclusion that I am nothing without the love of Christ, and He has placed His love in me.
What I find on the other side is that I often struggle to find words. I can’t come up with great, profound statements quite as readily as I used to. I can’t console myself with my own virtue. I see my weakness and false motives before my eyes so often that it is difficult to find anything in myself to boast about. Yet another layer of the onion has been removed, and as tempting as it is to put a pretty face on it, I don’t want to grow it back! I want you to see me weak. I want you to know that I need mercy. I want you to know that I am the beloved in the midst of these things. I need to be reminded...often.
How have you seen the grace of God "come full circle" in your life?
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first time here. I have spent
first time here. I have spent the last 9 months teaching in a mission school in Haiti. I have come to question so many of what I came to believe were the "bedrock" things in my life. I just knew so much about what was right and wrong, and now, it all seems so jumbled. But thru it I have come to know God's grace in my life in a way I hadn't before. I am not well educated in theology, so I cannot comment in ways that others can. What I know is that God brought me out of a good job to a point of desperately wanting something else in my life. As I look back on the years leading up to my quitting a good job to come here, I see God's hand in so many area's of my life where I was, well, not quite a finished work. Now, living among some of the poorest people in the world, it seems quite peaceful to me in so many ways, like God has touched my life and said "see, it's not about what you thought it was". And that revelation, that work of God in my life over years to bring me here, is such a grace to me. If I never return here, (and I hope to), I have learned more about people here than I thought I knew in my entire life before. In learning about "them", I have learned about myself, and I see God's grace in every step of the process. I am not sure if this is what you were looking for in response, but there it is. Thanks for your blog, I plan to visit often. There aren't many places one can go to find these things. God bless everyone at Metamorpha and what you are doing.
Exactly!
Dan, this is just the thing...God has been at work in you, and he has given you a gift in removing the scales from your eyes to see a deeper part of his heart. It is good to hear stories of how God meets us when we just stay open. He sets the agenda for what growth looks like, what we need to pay attention to, and what work of transformation he wants to do, all the while moving us beyond theoretical knowledge into the experience of life. Thank you for sharing your heart in this.
The movement of the Spirit
Jenny, thank you for sharing your heart. As I read your post I was reminded of how much the Holy Spirit has done by way of transforming my heart these past few years, and yet how in the midst of the transformation I miss what He is doing so often or it simply feels like I am in the fog. He truly is the agent of change...that truth, much like the truth you have begun to hold deep within your heart, has come full circle for me.