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We’re starting a forty day study.  It’s not the first one for the church; and there’ll be others.  We started this blog a year ago to facilitate day to day “conversation” about another study, Treasures of the Transformed Life.  The temptation is to read seven chapters on Saturday night (or skim seven chapters in fifteen minutes on Sunday morning).

But that robs us of the experience that these studies are designed to give us.  None of us are as faithful as we’d like to be in our day to day relationship with God.  It’s easy enough to blame that failure on “modern times” and the fast-paced life we live in the “electronic age”.  Okay . . . we can’t slow things down, but we can put electronics to use.  We can take charge of where all this “information” takes us.  In a slower paced world, we’d want to set aside time daily for the next forty days to meet together in small groups and discuss what we’re reading.  Do we agree with the author?  Disagree?  Do we want to take the conversation in an entirely different direction?

The fact is that, even in the “good ole days” we humans were good at coming up with all sorts of reasons why we couldn’t take time during the week to focus on God.  We’re still good at it, and the “fast pace” of faxes, the internet and email are just the lastest convenient excuse for not setting aside time each day to engage in reflection, meditation and prayer.

Henry Nouwen makes the point in The Way of the Heart that true ministry begins in solitude, silence and prayer.

“The very first thing we need to do is set apart a time and a place to be with God and him alone. . . . A real discipline never remains vague or general.  It is as concrete and specific as daily life itself.”

Now, it may seem strange that I’m starting off my “invitation to blog” during this study by quoting Fr. Nouwen on the subject of solitude and silence, but he goes on to make the point that,

“Here we reach the point where ministry and spirituality touch each other.  It is compassion.  Compassion is the fruit of solitude and the basis of all ministry.”

Last year I asked for “volunteers” to blog for a particular day.  The idea was to get the conversation going each day by bringing different perspectives to bear on each day’s reading.  It seemed to work.  But I think it worked best because it forced those who volunteered (or who were “volunteered”) to spend time in private reflection before they engaged in public sharing.

Here’s where the writings of Fr. Nouwen intersect with our first day’s reading — Incandescent Amazement — we work our way from solitude, prayer, silence and reflection to articulating our compassion, understanding and care.  But, as Nouwen makes clear in Out of Solitude,

“Care born out of solitude can hardly last unless by a hopeful expectation for the day of fulfillment when God will be all in all.  Without expectation, care easily degenerates into a morbid preoccupation with pain . . .”

As we start this journey of forty days together, it’s fitting that Maxie Dunnam emphasizes God’s creation — God’s “first day activity”, and God’s grace as an integral part of that creation.  Andy made the point in his sermon today, and in the choice of the Gospel lesson, John 1:14-18.  “The Word became flesh and lived among us . . . From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”  Like Genesis 1:1-11, this is not history, this is past, present and future reality — it is truly the mystery of our faith.  The expectation that lifts care from morbid preoccupation with pain for Fr. Nouwen is also found in the Gospel of John, in chapter 16:

“‘In a short time you will no longer see me, and then a short time later you will see me again. . . . you are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy, and that joy no one shall take from you.”

He came to us, he left us, he returned for us, and will return again.  Because, from the beginning, he earnestly desires us to be with him.  This is what the Psalmist repeatedly refers to as “chesed”:  God’s “steadfast love” that endures for ever.  How do you understand this “steadfast love”, this enduring mystery of grace upon grace?  How have you experienced it?