Attention of the Heart
Keith Ross
June 10, 2017
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Romans 8: 14-17
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
This week’s prayer series comes from the story of Pentecost that inspires us to seek an annual renewal of our faith and experience how the call of God can shape today’s Church. At the centre of that call to reframe our thinking and living in faith is prayer.
In the 14th century the spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing invited its readers to ‘pray from the heart’ in order to understand what it meant to put on the spirit and mind of Christ. Whether you pray daily for the two minutes it will take you to read this or the twenty you can devote to this practice - a Prayer of the Heart is designed to lay a foundation to allow an attentiveness that is able to let go of the constant creativity of our crowded minds and focus upon the companionship and activity of God’s love all around us. Its practice is to remould our own spiritual life and in turn shape the Church community we are part of. In this venture we are part of a heritage of son or daughtership Paul writes of in the Romans passage above.
Prayer
Abba, Father let Your Holy Spirit lay its hand upon me, each and every day. In the image of this touch allow a sensation through my skin, to the organs of my heart, reaching the essence of my soul as the Spirit weaves and infuses a message of hope, the lessons of love, and the experience trying to live a life-of-Christ in my daily life.
May our Churches be the co-heirs to the ideal of how a community should be shaped by Your Spirit; testifying to a life of Christ by how the fruits of the spirit are exercised; healing the unconsciousness of its ethos by an atmosphere of peace, kindness, goodness and faithfulness; being able to unload the negativities of life and be grounded by self control, gentleness and patience. For in the world ‘out there’ let the unbreakable dynamism of a joyful love be the force that leads us to respond to the call of the messy realities of relationships and injustice. Amen.
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