Welcome to Responding with Prayer,
An opportunity to respond with God to the complex everyday experiences that lift us up and bring us down.
Hello,
My name is Jess,
And I have struggled with attending to prayer,
And I hope this little offering brings you closer to the Creator.
Today's meditation is on pursuing a dream.
To start,
Let's take five big breaths together.
Deep breathing has been studied and found to change how we engage stress and situations.
It's good for slowing down,
Preparing for prayer,
But also a good practice for all kinds of situations we find ourselves in.
So,
Just feel yourself breathe for 60 seconds.
We'll take one minute to slow our hearts and our minds down,
And just breathe.
That was literally 60 seconds.
If your mind went to other places just now,
Or happens throughout this time,
That's okay.
It's natural.
You're still here,
So let's move on.
Take one moment and identify a person or situation you are grateful for as you do this.
Take a moment and,
Out loud or in your head,
Express gratitude towards God for that person or situation.
Our dreams are an outgrowth of our experience,
Convictions,
And hopes.
They are a part of us because they represent what we care about most.
There are all sorts of reasons why our dreams get delayed or subverted.
However,
We can come to that season when it is the right time for the right yes.
The Hebrew Scriptures tell of a time when God's Spirit comes down and young see visions and old dream dreams.
Has the Spirit shown you a vision or a dream,
And it's time to say yes to it?
Our bodies are an important part of prayer,
So if you're able,
Put your arms out and turn your palms up in a posture of release to the Creator.
The Christian Scriptures tell of a very practical spiritual opportunity.
Offer back to God the good things we're given,
And they will be blessed.
So imagine you wrote the dreams and visions on the palms of your hands,
Turned upward towards the Creator as an act of submission.
What words would be there?
God,
We place into your hands these things on our hands.
We give to you the revelations and holy imagination that you have put in our hearts and our minds.
These are your plans and your dreams.
They have to do with your work and your people in your world.
They have come to me but are not my possessions or even responsibility.
You are the sower and the harvester.
We move at your pace,
In your time,
With your work,
And we offer our yeses to you.
In prayer,
We slow down and make commitments to our core foundations.
Spend one minute expressing to God how pursuing this dream might impact your life and how you're feeling about it today.
God,
We accept the freedom that comes with submission to you.
We often fight against the very abundant life that you have for us.
So we accept the grace of these dreams that you've given us,
And the grace of getting to pursue them.
Your job is faithfulness,
While your job is results.
Now taking time today did not make your visions or dreams a reality.
It may have changed your orientation towards them,
However.
You may need to take some greater steps for first actions of faithfulness towards what's been revealed to you.
But the great spiritual writers in the Christian tradition often maintained that prayer's greatest gift is not that it suddenly changes our situations,
But that it often changes us.
Amen.
