Sunday, May 25, 2008

Dearest God,

What a beautiful new day it is, singing, clapping and dancing in the aisles at church. A new director of music, a jazz musician, an award-winning organist is leading us to our new day. One member simply thanked him for his music and he asked the member his favorite song. "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" began to fill the holy space and the member suffering with Leukemia was thrilled.

A new kind of joy is filling the church. Those who gather to worship, to seek guidance for their lives, to find new ways of being are finding their own inner source of joy. You are revealing our insides to us. You are showing us where joy resides every day. You are giving us a view of what we look like inside when we are open to your leading.

It seems we hide our insides from others. More often than not, when we build barriers between us and others, we are also building obstacles to our own inner source of joy. Our own interior is hidden from ourselves. If we do this too long, we lose our way, can't find our self, can't get to what makes us happy inside.

Obstructing our view to our self is destructive, at the very least damaging to the soul. When we can't get to the sacred tools of discovery, we give up some of our inner strength. We will soon lack courage and the ability to risk. We will sink downward, not even realizing what we are doing.

But when we are open, truly open, arms wide open to receiving guidance from on high, we open ourselves to you, to the depths of faith, to the well of living water, to ideas and thoughts from heaven. And that's when joy begins seeping upward, erupting, and spilling out and over.

That's the joy we experienced today, the sacred joy of heaven, divine and sweet. Oh so sweet.

Thank you,
Sacred Gift Giver.
You love
your church
and your desire
is to fill her
to capacity
with eternal joy.
What we saw today
is but a pittance
of what is yet
to come.
We offer up
to you
our earnest prayers
of thanksgiving.

Love, Andrea