Grass Eating, Drip Paintings, and a Response from YOU!
Good Friday Morning Rock Creek Family and Friends,
This time last year, I wrote to remind you our church-wide Two Year Scripture reading plan was underway, aimed at letting us as a congregation, “eat from the same patch of grass” throughout the year as we linger over and loiter with “God’s words that work.”
I will soon resume, for those who previously committed to daily prayer for RCF, a daily email prayer guide for 30 straight days for anyone interested in praying as a congregation together each day while we are alone with God. BUT this time, I’ll tie the prayers into year 2 of our 2 Year Scripture Reading Plan. I will base each day’s prayer on some portion, theme, or aspect of the daily reading for that day.
Would like to be added to that list for Daily Scripture-based prayer?
If you were on the list previously, I will assume your wish to stay on, and if you would like to be added, we’d be honored and happy to add you!
I assume a scatter graph would be the accurate tool to depict how it went for us all during the year. If our congregational progress were reduced to points on such a graph, the intense variation might look like a “drip painting” from Jackson Pollack.
George MacDonald’s observation from “The Gifts of the Christ Child” though is my prescription today, no matter how last year went with the reading plan:
“It is but from the very step upon which one stands that one can move to the next.”
Did you read faithfully every day or most every day last year and are now ending up the vast expansive country of Isaiah as the plan would have us be?
Fantastic. Keep going from there to the next step, tomorrow’s reading.
Did you have an incredible intention like as a child when you’d get all new school supplies and be bursting with zeal to get going only to discover that school itself wasn’t nearly so riveting as the feeling of acquiring all those pretty notebooks and nifty pens, pouches, and brightly colored pencils?
Understood. Keep going from there to the next step, tomorrow’s reading.
Did you ignore our congregational aspiration for reading the Bible in 2 years together, mumble something under your breath like, “they can’t tell me what to do” and then never much ponder it again--discarding the notion like you would an unsolicited glossy flyer from your Local Ford Dealer promising to give you the best deal on your trade, “Re-Gardless” at this weekend’s exclusive “Grab it or Die” sale?
I get that. But how about, start from there to the next step, tomorrow’s reading?
Are you starting to surmise that I’m annoyingly urging you to start from wherever you are to take the next step of bringing more of God’s words and thought into your life as soon as possible? Good! You can try it here.
That’s all I want to say for today. I hope you will jump back in, or keep at it if you already have been.
I close as I did this week in my essay at the chattanoogan.com:
“Should we loiter in the precincts of this ancient and often messy book, we might just make a happy discovery, like Dr. Alexander Fleming’s in 1928 in London when he stumbled on a go-to cure for infectious diseases. We ourselves may find a penicillin in Scripture’s strange pages to eradicate the ruinous bacteria in our own lives and propel us toward health.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer surely gathered this possibility when he left us this question we can dangle before ourselves like a divine New Year’s lure:
“Who can refuse, without suffering loss, a help that God has deemed it necessary to offer?”
“The one who takes the bait, blessed is,” as Yoda might add.”
Let me know if you’d like to be added to the daily Scriptural Prayer list!
Best,
Pastor Eric