I invite you to take a few moments to intentionally settle into the space wherever you might be sitting or laying down.
Feeling the weight of your body resting,
Noticing any tension that's having a hard time relaxing.
You can go ahead and breathe into that tension for a few moments.
As you breathe into that tension,
You can visualize it almost breaking up like mist or particles and leaving your body with each exhale.
Breathing fresh air in,
Exhaling tension and stress out.
Anything else that would be helpful for you to feel grounded and settled in this space for these few minutes we'll spend together.
You might want to stretch your arms or roll your shoulders.
You might want to stretch your neck or let out a really deep,
Heavy sigh.
Maybe today is a day where you need to let out a bit of a yell.
Whatever you need,
Take a moment to honor that.
Continuing nice deep breaths throughout,
I invite you to simply listen as I will read through a few verses.
There's nothing else that you need to do.
You simply get to be and let God's word wash over you,
Receiving any new mercies or grace that he might want to extend in this space today.
I'm going to be reading a few verses from Lamentations 3.
If you want to,
After this audio,
You can spend time in this entire chapter.
If you do,
You'll see this is a really heavy,
Raw,
And painful space that these words come out of.
These are by no means light words.
I'll start in some of that pain and some of that heaviness.
And we'll get to see the ways that that shifts and we can explore how that speaks to our soul.
Verse 16.
He made my teeth crunch down on gravel,
Crushed me in the dust.
My life abandoned peace.
I forgot what was good.
And I thought,
My strength and my hope are lost before the Lord.
Recall my affliction and my wandering,
Wormwood and poison.
My very life does recall and bends down upon me.
As I answer to my heart,
Therefore I yet hope.
The Lord's kindness has not ended.
For his mercies are not exhausted.
They are renewed every morning.
Great is your faithfulness.
My portion is the Lord,
I said.
Therefore,
I yet hope for him.
And as you continue some nice deep breaths,
I'm going to close this time with a prayer.
Inviting God to specifically minister to any part of us that doesn't have hope and doesn't have the strength to shift into a space of saying,
Yet I have hope and I will hope in him.
And the reason I'm going to pray this is because sometimes I think scriptures like this can almost feel shaming.
Can almost feel like this comparison that makes our faithlessness or places of little faith feel bad and wrong.
And rather than us trying to either hide that,
Ignore that,
Dismiss that,
Or force it to just somehow get better,
I think our answer is to look to God and ask him to breathe new life and breathe new hope into those spaces,
Into those facets of us that are in need of him.
Lord God,
I thank you that we have scriptures in our faith tradition that we can resonate with in terms of pain,
In terms of hurting and crying out.
And I thank you that alongside these scriptures,
We do still see joy and hope.
I pray that this would not send any kind of shaming messages to us,
But that you would use these words to bring about sparks of hope in spaces that we cannot bring about sparks of hope on our own.
You know the facets of our being,
The depths of our soul,
That feel as though they are in the middle of still having teeth crunched down on gravel and being crushed into dust,
Feeling completely abandoned of peace,
Forgetting what good is.
Would you mercifully pour out a hope and a strength that we cannot cultivate on our own,
And would we receive this with relief in a way that would feel unburdening,
Knowing that it is not our job to hold all things together,
It is not our job to make our relationship with you perfect and right and steadfast,
That in your goodness,
You are steadfast,
You are true,
You are constant,
And none of our messiness is too big or too messy for you.
Amen.
