A few days ago I visited a mercy ministry in another town as part of our preparation and planning for building a capacity-building ministry in our community. Talking with the director of the ministry I visited, I was reminded again of just how many beautiful souls there are in the world. I keep running into people who care deeply about dignifying life, and who sacrifice for that cause.

Toward the end of my visit, my host invited me to step into the foyer where folks had begun to gather, both volunteers and clients, just after the doors of the ministry opened for the day. Their tradition is to gather that first crowd into a circle to pray over everything ahead.

The guy leading the prayer time asked if anyone had any prayer needs. There was silence for a moment, then a woman piped up. “The world,” she said. “Pray for the world.” A few knowing nods acknowledged what was on her heart. Yes, this is a hard world to live in and those in that circle felt the sharp edges of this world more acutely. We ought to pray for a kinder, gentler option.

More silence, then someone motioned toward a young man near the door. “Dylan just lost his home in a fire. Pray for him.” We all sighed toward Dylan. What a heavy thing to handle. We ought to pray for this man, who looked pretty lost.

A bit more silence, and the guy in charge said, “Okay then … we’ll pray for Dylan and the world.”

Dylan … and the world.

“Dylan and the world” make me mindful that changing the world begins with the person standing in front of me. “Dylan and the world” are the mustard seed and the mountain. They are Jesus telling us to be faithful with a little before we can be faithful with more. They are one woman telling Jesus that even the dogs get the crumbs, and Jesus using crumbs to feed thousands of people.

This is how it is in the Kingdom of God. There is a tension in God’s economy between the one and the many — a tension God himself seems able to hold together. God cares about Dylan, and He also cares about the millions of “Dylans” who have lost their homes this year to the evils of war, communist dictatorships, natural disasters and angry mobs. Eleven million Syrians have left their homes since 2011; Syrian refugee camps stretch on as far as the eye can see. Venezuelans have taken to the streets by the scores to protest their chronic economic crisis (inflation is expected to drive toward 2000% in 2018; try to wrap your mind around that).

The world can be a harsh place. Jesus says (Matthew 24:6-8), “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.” This sounds too familiar. The world is a hard place.

At the end of Fiddler on the Roof, a poor tailor asks the rabbi as they are being forced out of their town, “Wouldn’t now be a good time for the Messiah to return?” In the Kingdom of God, this is how the tension is resolved … in Jesus. Jesus is the common denominator between the person in front of us and a worldful of need. And if that is so, then maybe the best prayer we can pray for “Dylan and the world” is the prayer of the early Church: Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus. It was the prayer of the first followers of Jesus as they strained toward the Kingdom against tides of conflict and persecution. First-century Christians earnestly watched and prayed for his return, even as they spread the word about the Messiah. They believed passionately that in him is the one, enduring answer to burned-down houses, down-and-out men, failing economies, homelessness, and a world chock-full of hard edges.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Much of what Paul wrote was to stir up a hunger for an answer to that prayer. “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen… ”  “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

I don’t think we ought to use a cry for Jesus’ return as an escape from being part of the solution. After all, Dylan deserves the whole gospel; the world deserves the best of Kingdom work. Our hearts must be broken for what is happening all around us. But I do believe that developing a hunger for the final answer to a fallen world will help us have faith enough to stand in that tension between the troubles in front of us and a world spiraling out of control.

Come, Lord Jesus. We are hungry to see you in all your glory, and to be delivered from the darkness.

Reprinted with permission from www.artofholiness.com

This post is part of a series on integrating the values and practices of Celtic Christianity into our lives.

On a cold winter’s evening, whether to toast marshmallows, chat with friends or curl up and read a book, many of us might enjoy the opportunity to cozy up to a brightly burning fire in the hearth. But how many of us depend upon a fireplace—excepting in dire emergencies—to heat up our homes? The reality is, despite whatever scouting skills may still be lurking in your back pocket, most of us need only rely on a switch or a button to raise the temperature on the thermostat. And those of us with smart phone and security cameras can adjust our homes as needed from remote locations. With effortless ease, our homes are kept comfortable with the flick of our wrist or the point of our finger.

Not so the medieval Celtic woman. She had to be skilled in the art of fire tending: how to keep the fire from smoldering and filling the house with smoke, yet not use too much peat as to waste the precious resource that had been cut from the bogs months before and dragged to the home where it dried before burning. Physical labor, often dusty and dirty work, was also necessary—to haul the peat, shovel the cinders and keep the flue clean and safe from chimney fires. The fire she lit each morning in the hearth of her home was the fire she depended on to heat the home, cook her family’s food, and be a ready source of flame to ignite a splint that would light a trimmed wick from which to see; the fire depended upon how well she “smoored” or banked down the fire the previous night. In the midst of this manual labor, a prayer to the Trinity such as the following accompanied the nightly ritual which involved spreading embers into a raised heap before it was divided into three sections on which peat was laid.

The sacred Three

To save,

To shield,

To surround,

The hearth,

The house,

The household,

This eve,

This night,

Oh! this eve,

This night,

And every night,

Each single night. Amen.

The next morning, as she stirred the ashes and coaxed a flame from the coals, she prayed again. And just as she prayed the evening before, her prayer was more than a simple wish for the fire to light; it was a prayer that her day’s labor would be guided by the one who is the source of all Light.

I will kindle my fire this morning,
in the presence of the holy angels of heaven,
in the presence of Ariel of the loveliest form,
in the presence of Uriel of the myriad charms,
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
Without fear, without terror of any one under the sun,
But the Holy Son of God to shield me,
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
Without fear, without terror, of any one under the sun,
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.

God, kindle Thou in my heart within

A flame of love to my neighbor,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,
to the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,
O Son of the loveliest Mary,
From the lowliest thing that liveth,

To the Name that is highest of all,
O Son of the loveliest Mary,
From the lowliest thing that liveth,
To the name that is highest of all.

I wonder how many of us pray when we adjust the thermostat? Sure, we may pray the furnace keeps heating and the lights stay on as we prepare for an ice storm, blizzard or other wicked weather. And the exclamation, “Thank God!” when power has been restored after a power outage is not exactly the prayer of gratitude to which I refer.

Do we regularly stop and consider all the ways in which God is present in our lives and has provided so our homes have electricity, power and running water? Do we pray as diligently and as intentionally as the Celtic woman’s kindling prayer for the basics of life? I confess I do not, and I am willing to wager that I am not alone. I suspect one reason we do not pray for the utilities that supply our homes is that we have come to expect them as a consequence of modern-day first-world living.

And underlying our expectation that electricity, heat and hot water are effortlessly a part of contemporary life is our very disassociation from the basic necessities of life and the constant need to attend to them. Unlike the fire in the fireplace or the wick in the oil lamp, our modern-day conveniences do not require the regular tending – except to pay our monthly bills in a timely manner.

But if we pay attention to the Celtic woman’s kindling prayer, we realize what she prays for is more than a comfortable home. She asks God to kindle a flame of love within her heart that will reach out beyond herself to include her neighbors. As she attends to the basic needs of her home, she is also looking beyond her family to take care of the needs of others. Her kindling prayer reflects the nature of the Triune Godhead who is whole, complete and integrated as its own self, yet bothers to invite humanity to share in the gift of divine love.

The kindling prayer teaches us that once ignited, the flame of love needs regular tending. Our relationship with God and our relationship with others is not an on-again, off-again event that can be controlled by the flip of a switch or the turn of a spigot.

Our cues from the kindling prayers invite us to attend to the relationships that sustain us, to understand we depend upon God and one another. In many respects, the kindling prayer reminds us that relationship is as basic a necessity to life as heat and light. The kindling prayer considers the plight of our neighbor, both the ones we like and the ones we do not. How many of us know all the neighbors on our block? In our apartment complex? For too many of us, it is not until the power goes out and stays out for more than a few hours that neighbors begin to pool their resources and check in on one another. And despite the inconvenience of doing without power for a day or two, a sense of community can be cultivated and experienced as folks band together to survive the black-out. But once the power is restored, it is easy to lapse back into our homes and the creature comforts we enjoy in our private domain, neglecting to regularly attend to and nurture the community in which we live but have no part.

So what’s a twenty-first century person to do to capture the spirit of Celtic Christianity? Jettison the modern conveniences of life? Go live in a cabin in the woods? Could it be something as simple and as mindful as praying the kindling prayer? Can we be like the Celtic woman, as diligent and as intentional to check in on our neighbors even when there isn’t an emergency?

This week, I invite you to pray the kindling prayer as part of your morning routine and the evening ‘smooring’ prayer, intentionally placing yourself before God at least twice a day.

Don’t simply adjust the thermostat in your home—or even check it, especially since it might be pre-programmed—without asking God to ignite the flame of love within your heart for your neighbor.

Be willing to allow God to use you as kindling in your community, to spark a flame that attracts others to its glow and spread the Light of the world into the dark shadows that oppress your neighborhood.

May the God of peace bring peace to your home,

May the Son of peace bring peace to your home,
May the Spirit of peace bring peace to your home,

This day, this night and evermore. Amen.

There are two difficulties with our prayer, “Thy will be done.” We fret over the first, but the second is far more dangerous.

“What is Your will? How do I know it? Where can I find it? Is this Your will?” This is the first difficulty. The second accompanies it, and often escapes our notice.

There is a forgotten moment in Elijah’s early career. First the widow’s jars of flour and oil never fail. Then her son, once dead, revives at Elijah’s prayer. Later, Elijah defeats the prophets of Baal. Those prophets, masters of spectacle, cannot reach their gods’ ears. Elijah’s God silences them. And when Elijah’s God comes, a consuming fire on Mount Carmel, the prophets of Baal are wiped out, along with the spectacle of their gods. The Word of the Lord silences them, and at that Word, heard once again by God’s chosen people, the drought breaks, rain falls.

But that Word, the Word on Elijah’s lips, was not so clear in the forgotten moment between the miracle of the widow and the miracle of fire. In that moment, two men meet before a Mountain.

1 Kings 18:1-16

After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year of the drought, saying, “Go, present yourself to Ahab; I will send rain on the earth.” And so Elijah went to present himself to Ahab. The famine was severe in Samaria. Ahab summoned Obadiah, who was in charge of the palace. (Now Obadiah revered the Lord greatly; 4 when Jezebel was killing off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets, hid them fifty to a cave, and provided them with bread and water.) Ahab said to Obadiah, “Go through the land to all the springs of water and to all the wadis; perhaps we may find grass to keep the horses and mules alive, and not lose some of the animals.” So they divided the land between them to pass through it; Ahab went in one direction by himself, and Obadiah went in another direction by himself. As Obadiah was on the way, Elijah met him; Obadiah recognized him, fell on his face, and said, “Is it you, my lord Elijah?” He answered him, “It is I. Go, tell your lord that Elijah is here.” And he said, “How have I sinned, that you would hand your servant over to Ahab, to kill me? As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom to which my lord has not sent to seek you; and when they would say, ‘He is not here,’ he would require an oath of the kingdom or nation, that they had not found you. But now you say, ‘Go, tell your lord that Elijah is here.’ As soon as I have gone from you, the spirit of the Lord will carry you I know not where; so, when I come and tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me, although I your servant have revered the Lord from my youth. Has it not been told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how I hid a hundred of the Lord’s prophets fifty to a cave, and provided them with bread and water? Yet now you say, ‘Go, tell your lord that Elijah is here’; he will surely kill me.” Elijah said, “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself to him today.” So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him; and Ahab went to meet Elijah.

Like Elijah, Obadiah is a servant of the Lord. Like Elijah, he defies the Canaanite gods of Jezebel, the Baals and the Asherah, gods tolerated by Ahab, King of Israel. Like Elijah, Obadiah defies the king. But he does so secretly. Obadiah defies Ahab in the king’s own court. He conspires against Jezebel’s plotting. In a time of drought, he secrets water away for prophets pursued by the queen.

Like Elijah, Obadiah’s faithfulness is dangerous. He is a faithful servant of the Lord in the house of Ahab. He risks himself for the Lord’s prophets. In this work, secrecy is his ally. He hides the prophets, fifty to a cave. He hides them.

Obadiah’s secrecy was his faithful service. He knew God’s Will: hide the prophets. And he followed God’s will, risking martyrdom. Jezebel silences prophets. But Obadiah guards the word of the Lord on the prophets’ lips. He preserves them, and in preserving them, he preserves the Lord’s word.

When Elijah comes, however, Obadiah is caught. He is caught between two other lords. “Is it you my lord Elijah?” he says. But Elijah replies, “It is I. Go tell your lord Ahab that Elijah is here.”

How often we find ourselves caught between Ahabs and Elijahs – caught between lords, uncertain how to serve the one Lord?

Of course, to us, the decision between Ahab and Elijah is obvious. But it was not so clear for Obadiah. Has not Obadiah been serving both the Lord and Ahab to this point? Not only that, but his obedience to Elijah, another lord, risks the failure of his prior faithfulness. What will happen to the prophets if Obadiah is found out, if Obadiah dies? Who will preserve the Word of the Lord on the prophets’ lips?

Obadiah is uncertain. He is not uncertain as to his Lord – that is clear. It is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. It is the God whose Word is on the lips of the prophets. But what does faithfulness to this God look like in this moment? How does he choose between his prior faithfulness and this new Word?

This is the second difficulty of “Thy Will be done” – that God’s will for one moment will become our idol in the next.

We focus our attention on easy idols. We love to preach against the Baals and the Asherah. We preach against injustice and immorality. But we’re afraid to speak of the idols that tempt us most: what God is doing through me, my gifts, my ministry, God’s will for my life.

How easily “thy will” becomes “my will.” Beware: the idol of “my will” is difficult to kick down. “God, if what you’re doing now doesn’t confirm, if it doesn’t extend, if it doesn’t expand the good works you began for me, I’m not interested. God, what about my sacrifices? What about my responsibilities? What about my gifts? What about my…..”

“What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7) What do you have that was not a gift? Do not mistake your gifts for possessions. They came from the Will of God, and there they must remain.

This is the second difficulty of “Thy Will be done” – the temptation to turn “Thy Will” into “My will.” Obadiah confronts this second difficulty. He pleads for himself. He pleads for his faithful service to God. And once again, the Word of God confronts him. “Go, tell your lord that Elijah is here.”

“So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him.” So ends the story of Obadiah. His departure is as sudden as his appearance. But even if his appearance is brief, his lesson lasts.

Obadiah could have usurped the Word of the Lord. Had he not won the right? While Elijah was away, in Zarephath, Obadiah was sleeping under the same roof as Ahab and Jezebel. Obadiah was hiding prophets. Obadiah was risking death.

And yet he obeys. And yet he submits. Confronted by the Word of the Lord, his prior service to God disrupted, his gifts, influence, and life risked, Obadiah obeys.

Another day, another man confronts the will of God before another mountain. Jesus prays the prayer he taught his disciples, “Thy Will be done.” “Not my will, but Thine.” And in his prayer, he overturns our most tantalizing idols. He shows us that we too can pray that prayer – “Thy Will be done.”

But God, look at what I can do for you. Look at what I’ve begun. What about my gifts? You don’t give them in vain, do you?

All the gifts of God are ordered to a greater gift: the gift of Christ-in-me, so that all things might be conformed to the pattern of Christ, the One through whom God is reconciling all things to himself.

Unless we hold God’s will as Christ held his Father’s, our gifts corrupt. They grow into the most sinister of idols, more powerful than the Baals.

Obadiah came, and encountered the word of God. His will submitted to God’s, and in his obedience he prefigured Christ. Christ came, and was the Word of God. His will was the will of the Father, and the power of his obedience empowers our own.

Christ’s prayer in the garden, “Not my will, but thine,” silences the false gods and overturns the idols. Christ’s prayer in the garden, “Not my will, but thine,” empowers our own prayer – “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” The prayer is there in Obadiah’s silence. The prayer is now on our lips.

And so we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray … and we teach our children to pray, just as we were taught: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…Not my will, but thine.”

For my shield this day

A mighty power:
The Holy Trinity!

Affirming threeness,

Confessing oneness,
In the making of all

Through love…

The breastplate of St. Patrick features this refrain at both the beginning and the end of its poem. St. Patrick’s invocation of the Trinitarian Godhead—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is emblematic of Celtic Christianity. St. Patrick may be famously remembered for using the shamrock to explain the Trinity (even though his analogy and other ones are derided by the Irish twins  Donall and Conall on YouTube), but his attraction to Trinitarian language and symbolism is shared by many other Celts. What can be more holistic and integrated than to invoke the name of the Trinity, the fullness of God?  Addressing each member of the Godhead—the one who creates, the one who redeems and the ones who sustains—is a natural part of Celtic prayer, weaving each member into prayers, both the ones spoken in corporate worship or the ones prayed privately by individuals.

For many contemporary Christians, to pray in the Celtic tradition can seem very “Catholic,” especially modern-day converts who are taught a prayer has no real merit unless it includes the phrase “in the name of Jesus.” Truly, I have had more than one conversation with students about the efficacy of prayers I offer because I did not invoke that exact phrase! To which I have pointed out (as a previous professor pointed out to me once before) that to depend solely on this usage is to reduce the “power, power, wonderworking power in the blood” of Jesus and negate the fullness of the Trinity. There is power in the name of Jesus, but to cut it off from membership it shares with the the co-equal, co-eternal, co-existent persons of the creating Father and sustaining Holy Spirit is to ask Jesus to work with two hands tied behind his back. Sure, he can do it, but not in the fullness or totality that is the divine nature of God. After all, each member of the Godhead, the Father, Son, and Spirit, share equally in divinity, power, and love. All distinctive, yet participating so closely with one another and infused so deeply with one another, that they are one.  We might call it a divine dance of love in which each participant gives of their self to the others so wholly and completely that they live and act as one being. They are one entity. As a divine entity, they are complete and whole unto their self in no need of anything else. It needs nothing else. Not even humanity, not even the world.

God’s love is so complete in the Godhead that nothing else is needed. But, it is not all that God desires. God’s love desires to include more, not because God needs to, but because God wants to. God did not give into a whim in the act of creation.

Creation is the result of God deliberately acting out of love to share love with others beyond God’s self in the Trinity. Redemption is what God did in Jesus by deliberately acting out of love to rescue what rejected him but still desires to accept divine love and be saved. Sustenance is what God continually does to care for, guide and nurture persons in their ongoing relationship with God and one another—but never are these actions done apart from one another. Basic to Wesleyan understanding and theology is that the love of God flows through Jesus Christ to us by grace and in combination with Holy Spirit, and we are able to find new life and faith through Holy Spirit who sustains, comforts, and empowers us to offer ourselves to God through the work of Christ.

The Celtic understanding of the threeness that is oneness and the oneness that is threeness  is more than a celebration of the power of three. Sure, scoring hat-tricks in futball (think American soccer) and hockey are great, and getting a trifecta is special, but the Trinity is far more than the accidental occurrence of three particular events. The Trinity is the essence and nature of God, not only to be invoked in prayers, but symbolized in artwork.

The Triquetra, or Celtic knot, three leaves without beginning or end, is a Trinitarian symbol long associated with the Celts, but now popular in many other forums. With a circle entwined around it, the infinite mystery of God, without beginning and without end offers the artist and the viewer exquisite beauty that can be represented in infinite variations.

As predominant as the Trinity is within Celtic Christianity, Trinitarian thinking is not the exclusive purview of the Celts. John Wesley illustrated the entwined nature of the Trinity within Christianity when he preached, “knowledge of the Three-One God is interwoven in all true Christian faith with all vital religion” (On the Trinity 2:385). His prayers, his brother’s hymnody, the liturgy of the early Methodists—and even those who claim to be his modern-day descendants—seek the fullness and the richness of the Trinity in corporate worship.

Yet artwork, hymnody, liturgy and prayer are not the only ways the Trinity can be represented. To take another phrase from the Wesleys, Christian disciples are living, breathing “transcripts of the Trinity.” Created, redeemed and sustained by God, we are empowered by the Trinitarian God of the universe to be in relationship with the rest of creation—to share the infinite love of the Trinity with others. This requires relationship. And within that relationship there is cooperation with the divine, discipline by the divine, practice. It takes dedication, desire and commitment to participate with the divine actions of God in this world.

That is what it means to be a disciple of Christ: to be willing to dedicate ourselves to God, submit ourselves to Christ’s teaching, and be directed by the Holy Spirit in all that we do. And just as the Godhead is not comprised of a simple single deity, but lives in Trinitarian communion, we as God’s creation are meant for connection and community—to live with and among one another for the fullness, goodness and the advancement of God’s kingdom here on earth.

So what’s a contemporary Christian to do to recover the Celtic tradition of Trinitarian prayer?

As a way to begin, I suggest it is possible to think about the actions and events that occur in the ordinary everydayness of life and appeal to the Godhead in prayer.

In what ways do we create, whether it be making meals, making decisions about schedules, which bills must be paid, making judgments about whether your child needs correction or nurture? When do you find yourself being an intermediary, a conduit of communication for others, appealing on the behalf of a friend, a spouse, a sibling, a parent, or a co-worker to another? How are you seeking to sustain yourself as well as family members or friends, looking to guide others in their decision-making processes, to nurture yourself and the relationships that sustain you? Chances are, if you are like me, life and love are as complicated as they are simple. Any one action involves a host of motivations, needs and desires as we seek to act in faithful obedience to God and one another.

As you go about your week, consider the myriad actions and roles you play in your life. Consider how they intersect with one another and bring a fullness to your life. Ask God, in the fullness of the Trinity, to guide you, prompt you and create within you a life of fullness and wholeness that is integrated and reflects the goodness and glory of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For my shield this day

A mighty power:
The Holy Trinity!

Affirming threeness,

Confessing oneness,
In the making of all

Through love…

Chances are, you or someone you know gave or received a coloring book for adults in the last year. With titles as catchy as “Color Me Stress Free” or “The Art of Relaxation,” the coloring craze has swept the nation. Whether the book contains images of floral gardens, mandalas or other graphic patterns, the idea behind coloring therapy is to find “inner peace” or your Zen through selecting a desired pencil and shading in a printed design.

Coloring reportedly helps reduce stress in adults as it requires the brain, nervous system and muscles to use fine motor skills and therefore engages the participant in a creative action. An added benefit is that it is a skill learned in childhood, so the simplicity of what was once work for a young child is now a pleasant pastime. Regardless of any nostalgia coloring may evoke, the action of coloring allows the mind to rest from the myriad of helter-skelter activities of modern-first-world-living that keep it occupied otherwise.

Together, the right brain and left brain coordinate in the simple repetitive action of moving the pencil to dapple, daub, dot, fleck, or steadily tint the page with pigmentation with infinitely creative possibilities. No matter how many copies of the same pre-printed image are made available, each person who sits down to color expresses their own creative autonomy with the colors they choose, the techniques they use and whether or not they chose to stay within or even create outside the lines.

I wonder if coloring hasn’t become our contemporary culture’s expressed need for connection and integration. Living in a society in which so much is mechanized and automated, we lose track of who we are, how we function and who we are meant to be as human beings. Think about it: for many of us, eating and drinking – a basic human necessity- is something we access through cardboard boxes and cellophane wrappers. Yes, it is convenient to use the drive-thru line to get our Starbucks or use an app to place our to-go order ahead of time to use the handy carry-out parking space at Applebee’s or Panera’s. Such conveniences and technological assists allow us to be super productive in our overcrowded schedule. Yet, whether we like it or not, a sense of alienation begins to creep into our lives, disconnecting us from a life of intentionality, a life of integration, a life of wholeness that is a hallmark of Celtic Christianity.

Celtic Christianity, through its prayers and practices, grounds participants in the fundamentals of who we are as human beings – creatures of God, our lives connected to the earth and related to the world – even the world beyond our tangible senses.

In similar ways, the act of coloring connects us in a fundamental way to who we are as human beings, unified creatures made in the image of God who created us. Our mind, heart, and will are united in creative endeavor and that prods our soul and awakens it into consciousness – integrating our whole being. Instead of continually living a distracted existence that imperceptibly fractures our sense of self and belonging in the world, coloring is a simple, easily accessed and a typically pleasant pastime for many. Coloring allows a person’s mind, heart, and energies to become focused and provides rest and rejuvenation from the rat race that otherwise consumes us.

No wonder coloring has become a fashionable entry point for prayer and meditation. But coloring is no substitution for living a life of intentionality and integrity that is Christian. Even coloring a series of Celtic knots and designs does not make one practiced in the ways of Celtic Christianity – ancient or contemporary. It might be a start, but it is only the initial steps of a lifelong and all-encompassing journey of intentional whole-life discipleship.

In a series of several posts, I plan to explore the heart of Celtic Christianity, what such a life of integration and integrity looks like for a contemporary Christian and why such a life is authentic to our Wesleyan heritage. Each post will consider aspects of everyday life that threaten to distract and distort us from living full lives that seek the sacred and find connection with the endlessly creative Triune God who created the universe.

For those of you interested in taking this journey with me, try your hand at coloring once or twice in the next week. It need not be a Celtic design, but if a Celtic knot will help inspire or ground you in this experience a few links to some free on-line artwork are provided below.

http://www.supercoloring.com/coloring-pages/arts-culture/celtic-art

http://www.supercoloring.com/coloring-pages/celtic-knotwork

http://www.getcoloringpages.com/celtic-mandala-coloring-pages

http://www.getcoloringpages.com/celtic-knot-coloring-pages

As you color, consider the things you notice about the activity…what sorts of things are conducive to coloring? What distracts you from coloring? Do you enjoy coloring with others or do you prefer doing it by yourself? There are no right or wrong answers, but taking stock of the activity may lead to further insights about what Celtic Christianity might look like in our contemporary culture.

Until then – may this traditional Celtic blessing accompany you on your journey and serve as a benediction.

May you have –

Walls for the wind

And a roof for the rain,

And drinks bedside the fire

Laughter to cheer you

And those you love near you,

And all that your heart may desire.

J. C. Albert has to be one of the greatest followers of Jesus I’ve ever met. I met him in India in 2012. He was the most open, loving, friendly guy and he had these wonderful stories to tell of adventures with Jesus. He has visited and shared the good news of Jesus Christ in nearly 3,000 tribal villages in India. He has walked nearly 10,000 miles for Jesus while being chased by tigers and bears and Hindu extremists. He is a true adventurer who is fueled by the love of Jesus.

Every need Albert has had since beginning in ministry in the 80s has been met without him ever asking anyone for anything. He lets God determine both the need and the provision. Here is what he says about that in his little book on evangelism:

“Prayer is the fuel that runs our ministry. Every experience, trial and inspiration I have recorded is a result of prayer. The foremost thing I learned in ministry is prayer followed by Bible study. Prayer empowers and gives vision.”

Those words resonate with me and are proven not so much by my faithfulness as my failures. In seasons when my faith has faltered, I can invariably point to a fumbled prayer life. Prayer empowers and gives vision; the lack of it weakens trust and causes me to wander.

Maybe for the sake of improving my vision, God has been leading me more deeply into the place of prayer. For the last two years, I’ve been on a journey with God centered on intimacy. It started late in 2014 when the Lord spoke and challenged me to give my whole heart to him.

On the quest to understand what that means (and at this point, I can only say that I realize just how much I don’t know, and almost nothing about what I do know), I have discovered several interesting ways to increase the potency of my prayer life:

• I learned to pray with beads. I use a repurposed rosary. It helps me stay focused, especially around prayers of intercession. Every bead has a person or ministry attached, to help me be more disciplined in praying for people and things I love.
• I rediscovered the richness of fasting, though it comes and goes in seasons. Our church promotes 21 days of prayer and fasting every January. It has become for us a remarkably reflective and spiritually energizing way to begin the year.
• I’ve found in the Psalms a fresh vocabulary for prayer. In the library we call the Bible, Psalms is the prayer book. I believe the psalms can help us all find a better prayer life. Here, we find the all-too-human wrestlings of David, a man after God’s heart. We hear honest cries for help and deep, worshipful devotion. We get the full spectrum of emotions, not the least of which is anger. What we don’t hear in David’s conversations with God is anything remotely rote. No recitations. No empty wish list. No shallow musings. No generalized litanies of what we vaguely hope for the world.

The psalms are real prayers for real people. They challenge us to think deeply and honestly and give us permission to cry out, to feel, to get close, to give our whole heart. To be rough around the edges.

The psalms challenge us to pray as if God is real.

In Lynn Anderson’s book, They Smell Like Sheep, he offers several practical tips for those who want to learn how pray the Psalms.

1. Choose a psalm to focus on.
2. Read it through aloud, slowly and thoughtfully to get its sense.
3. Pray it aloud slowly, reflectively, in the first person (as your own prayer for yourself). Don’t hurry. Wallow in it. Savor it. Mean it.
4. Pray it aloud slowly, reflectively, in the second person (as an intercessory prayer on behalf of some other person).
5. Don’t end your prayer when the psalm ends. Let this psalm springboard you into the rest of your day’s prayers for current issues and persons that the psalm has brought to your heart. Let the psalm shape the day’s prayer list.
6. Stay there until God shows up. I realize this isn’t great theology. Of course, it isn’t God who doesn’t show up, but us. But from an experiential place, we can admit that when we don’t have patience for the waiting it can feel as if God is nowhere to be found. It isn’t that he doesn’t show up, but that we refuse him entry by rushing too quickly past the moment.

Even if it isn’t theologically accurate to say it this way, I stand by this good advice: Stay there until God shows up. If he doesn’t show up immediately, he will show up eventually.

May God meet you in the place of prayer today, like deep calling to deep.

Reprinted with permission from www.artofholiness.com.

“The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.” – Everyone from Vince Lombardi to Bear Bryant to Bobby Knight is cited as the source of this quote. The wisdom found in it has outlasted the origin.

Everyone wants to win. It doesn’t matter how you define winning – career success, relationship goals met, curling up everyday by a fire to read, being left alone, having friends, running marathons, sitting quietly, however you define it, everyone wants their goal to be met in the area most important to them.

I’ve thought about this a lot lately. Most people don’t Instagram the moment when they’re scrubbing the toilet bowl, or taking out the trash, or dusting the mantelpiece. Most people don’t live Tweet the truly difficult parts of a workout, or share a Facebook Live stream of a mundane, grinding dispute with a loved one. We like to edit our ongoing portrayal of our lives, and in part, that’s alright.

We pray, “thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” We ask God, we submit to God, that God’s will might unfurl across the universe, on earth, just as it is in the heavenly realms. Whether or not we see the connection between scrubbing a toilet and God’s will being done on earth, we do the first and pray the second.

Consider this passage from James 2:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works.

Any Christian who wants to appear pious knows that he or she should want God’s will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Few people want to scrub a toilet, wipe down its exterior, and clean the floor surrounding it. But you cannot separate faith from works. 

In other words, the will to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is not nearly as important as the will to ask God how we might help bring about God’s will to be done on earth today in our home and town and nation. If I ask God to take care of lonely shut-in’s, but I leave them off my Christmas card list, I am a, “resounding gong, a clanging cymbal.” And if I ask God to bring peace, but I harbor resentment in my heart, giving it room to settle and nest, then, “if I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” If I believe the right things, but I do not live sacrificially, I have missed the Kingdom of God. Even the demons can recite the Creed, say the Eucharistic liturgy, quote modern saints, recall Scripture passages. So what? They do not love their neighbor.

James demands, “can faith save you?”

Can praying, “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” save you?

We read in the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 40,

A voice cries out:
 In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

The Gospel of John follows up on Isaiah, as we read in John 1:

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’”

as the prophet Isaiah said.

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.”

John the Baptist did not just pray for God’s will to be done: he obeyed God by preparing the way for the Lord. John the Baptist went ahead in the wilderness, crying out, clearing the path so that Jesus could be revealed to Israel. The will for the Messiah to appear was not nearly as important for the will to cry out in the wilderness, clear the path, and make straight the way of the Lord.

God has given us the Holy Spirit so that we, like John, can prepare the way for the Lord. Only instead of looking for the first coming of the Messiah, we look for the second. Advent is a season when we celebrate both: we read of the census and the wise men, the slaughter of the innocent and the shepherds, Mary’s pregnancy with Jesus and Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John, while also reading from Revelation, of the prayers of the saints and the blood of the martyrs, of the Lamb of God and the loud chorus of heaven.

Do we have the will to pray without the will to prepare the way of the Lord?

We must both pray for God’s will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven, and prepare the way of the Lord, clearing his path, making God’s road straight and even. Otherwise, we’re a clanging gong, willing to Instagram our Sunday morning piety but not scrub our elderly neighbor’s toilet.

The will to see God’s Kingdom come is not nearly as important as the will to…what?

What is it you hope God doesn’t ask you to do, to prepare the way for his Kingdom?

Maybe that’s what we need to present to God this Christmas.

God, help us to be willing to prepare the way for you to arrive in people’s hearts and lives.