Prayer on the Go

May and early June have got to be the busiest times of the year for many of us. And just as soon as we catch our breath, many of us are off to take much-needed family vacations. In the summer, it seems, everyone is on the go.

So what does prayer “on the go” look like? Here are some suggestions:

1. Make the sign of the cross. In a hurry to get out of town on your family vacation? In a hurry to the ball field? Running a last-minute errand for hot dogs and watermelon? Make the sign of the cross over yourself and pray: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

2. Make it a car game. Before playing some of the traditional car games on a long trip, challenge each other to indentify things you see on the way and to pray for those people, things or events as a family.

3. Make a pilgrimage. For hundreds of years, Christians have made pilgrimages to places of significance for our faith. While you may not be traveling to Jerusalem this summer, you may want to visit another local church building, a retreat center, or another place of significance, like a cemetery. Find a local congregation that has a labyrinth and make a prayer walk.

4. Pray a map prayer. Find an area of the world that you would like to pray for and keep that place and its people in your prayers throughout the summer. You may want to consider praying for our missionary, John LeMond, in Hong Kong or our companion synod, the Dodoma Diocese of Tanzania in east Africa.

5. Pray a map prayer II. Use a globe or map and, with eyes closed, pick an area of the world to pray for each week of the summer. The Voice of the Martyrs publishes a global prayer map for areas of the world where Christians are persecuted. Pray for the suffering church!

Keep this page in your glove box this summer, especially the prayer below from our hymnal which can be prayed before travel.

O God, our beginning and our end, you kept Abraham and Sarah in safety throughout the days of their pilgrimage, you led the children of Israel through the midst of the sea, and by a star you led the magi to the infant Jesus. Protect and guide us now as we set out to travel. Make our ways safe and our homecomings joyful, and bring us at last to our heavenly home, where you dwell in glory with our Lord Jesus Christ and the life-giving Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (from Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 331)

The Holy Spirit

On Sunday, May 29 we will begin a three-week series on the Holy Spirit:

May 29: Who is the Holy Spirit?

June 5: What is the work of the Holy Spirit? (I)

June 12 [Pentecost]: What is the work of the Holy Spirit? (II)

I have been reading Francis Chan's Forgotten God as part of my preparation for this series. You might want to take a look at that.

As preparation for hearing the Word, I also invite you to see Chan's videos on God, which will be streaming for free this coming week, beginning on Sunday. You can watch them here. You can also purchase them in a variety of formats at flannel.org, the same good folks who brought us the Nooma series.

A New Commandment

My friend Phillip has written a reflection for Maundy Thursday. You can read it here.

Kids These Days

A wise professor of mine once observed that, if the discussion leader is not careful, most Bible studies and adult Sunday school class devolve into hemming and hawing about "kids these days."

I think he is exactly right.

This speaks to the larger sinful tendency we have: pointing out the sins of others before dealing with our own.

What if, instead of discussing "kids these days," we dealt with our own sin and began with questions like, "How does this text invite me to repent?"

Log out of our own eye first... then the speck of sawdust out of our neighbor's, as it were.

[And, yes, I am aware of the irony of this post.]

Facebook Forgiveness

Ever had to "re-friend" a friend you had "de-friended" on Facebook? It can be awkward at best (not to mention the grammatical conundrums such verbs present).

I confess to having done this. Usually it is because I am simply gleaning my "friends" list and delete a few here and there. Every once in a while, it is because the person posts to much (I am also guilty of this).

In every case, when I want to add them back in as a friend, it involves a good does of humility on my part. What if they are offended? What if they won't take me back? What if....?

But in almost every case, they consent to my friend request and, I presume, they forgive me.

What if that is the kind of forgiveness that we are called to practice?

Scripture by Memory

I have always thought of memorizing Scripture in mostly positive terms. Even when my own practice was spotty at best, it seemed to me an inherently good thing to do. I have been reading through Scripture by Heart by Joshua Choonmin Kang, who has prompted me to think more deeply about the many benefits of memorizing Scripture. Even when he raises something I've considered before, he does so in a way that deepens or expands my understanding.

However, I have bristled when well-meaning Christians have used their treasure-trove of memorized verses as blunt instruments to proof-text their way to "winning" a theological argument. And I have struggled to break--or at least reshape--a strong resistance to memorization among catechism students. I think Rich Melheim is on the right track by integrating Bible verses, singing and American Sign Language in his Bible Song curriculum.

Recently I have reclaimed Scripture memorization as a family (rather than individual) practice and have found it to be quite delightful. Yes, it has actually been delightful.

On the Sunday of the Transfiguration, we began as a family working together on a verse each week from the Sunday lectionary readings. We carefully choose a verse central to the theme of the day, usually from the Gospel reading. This serves a number of functions:

1) It binds us together as a family under God's word.

2) It binds the rhythms of Monday - Saturday to Sunday worship.

3) It binds our spirits, bodies and God's word together in an organic unity.

What have been your experiences memorizing Scripture? What you have you found helpful?

The Pastor as Turtle

The other day I was thinking about the importance of a pastor having waxy skin, so that criticism, the attacks of the evil one and the "tyranny of the urgent" can simply roll off, like beads of rainwater on a waterproof jacket. The more I thought about it, however, the image of a turtle surfaced.

1. A pastor needs a tough shell. This probably goes without saying. Pastors are often ego-driven people and we need to set up appropriate checks on that ego to keep both high criticism and high praise in their proper place (see this blog post from Michael Hyatt on this very subject). St. John Chrysostom writes that preachers should learn to disdain both praise and criticism equally. Pastors need a tough shell, to avoid the assaults of the evil one through their own ego.

2. A pastor needs soft skin too. Turtles have tough, protective shells, but turtles also have soft skin--at least skin that is vulnerable. So too with pastors. To me this is an incarnational issue. If the Son of God took upon Himself the fullness of our humanity, we are called to embrace our humanity as well: the pain and the tears, the joy and the elation.

3. A pastor needs to move slowly. This maxim is probably frustration for both pastors and the people they are called to serve and lead. We live in a world in which a text or email message can be around the world in an instant and a book can be downloaded to a portable reading device in under a minute. However, there is a virtue it moving forward slowly and patiently. And, as financial guru Dave Ramsey is fond of saying, "Whenever I read the story, the tortoise wins the race every time."

4. A pastor can move swiftly in the water. Once, when I was doing disaster relief work in the Caribbean, I had the chance to snorkel among sea turtles. I was amazed at how fast they move in the water. So too, pastors can move quickly when they are surrounded by the grace of baptism, and with a congregation of people who deeply embrace that they are all called to be priests in these same life-giving waters.

What do you think about this metaphor? What other images come to mind?

When is the Sermon Done?

When is the sermon done? This is a question preachers struggle with quite frequently--not only in crafting the sermon, but in delivering it.

When is the sermon done? This is a question jokingly posed by hearers quite regularly--as if the proclamation of the Gospel is something simply to endure.

When is the sermon done? When God is finished winging his word into the hearts of his people and bringing forth fruit for his Kingdom.

Isaiah 55:11: . . . so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Devotional Books

Each new year I evaluate the devotional books I use as part of morning prayer. I always keep a few and then switch others out. The list below represents the ones I use on an ideal day, in roughly the order I move through them.

For the order of Scripture readings, I use the St. James Daily Devotional Guide for the Christian Year. This guide moves through the New Testament once a year and the Old Testament every two years, with a good balance between reading systematically through books of the Bible and taking into account major feast days such as Easter and Christmas.

Some others I find helpful are:

+ Eugene Peterson's Praying with the Psalms: I love Eugene Peterson's work. Last year I read through Living the Message. Each day there is an invitation to read a Psalm or part of a Psalm and he has brief meditation and a prayer. Often I pair this with the selected Psalm in Reading the Psalms with Luther.

+ I have always enjoyed reading the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. One way to do this, gem by gem, is through Bernard Bangley's By Way of the Desert.

+ Henri Nouwen's Bread for the Journey contains a brief meditation for each day of the year. Nouwen always has perspicuous insights into the "everyday" of living the Christian faith.

+ For a bit meatier fare, I enjoy J.D. Watson's A Hebrew Word for the Day. He also has a companion Greek volume that I read through last year.

I should probably say that it is not everyday that I get through all of these devotional books. At a bare minimum, I pray the Trisagion Prayers and try to read as many of the daily Scripture readings as I can, beginning with the daily appointed Gospel reading.

For shorter snippets of Scripture throughout the day, I subscribe via email to the Moravian Daily Texts. A friend of mine also gave me a copy of Bread for the Day, with a short Scripture reading each day based on the Revised Common Lectionary.

What devotional books / guides do you find most helpful for daily prayer and Scripture reading?

The Future of my Blog?

I have not been posting to this blog as regularly as I would like. Chalk it up to a busy fall, especially on the funeral front.

In any case, I am rethinking its purpose and theme and--on a more fundamental note--whether I will continue it at all.

So what do you say, faithful readers? Feel free to email me directly: pastormusteric [at sign] gmail.com with any suggestions. What have you found most helpful? What would you like to see more of? What is the perfect frequency for posting?

In the off-chance that I get few or not responses, that will help me settle the question as well.