Welcome to Responding with Prayer,
An opportunity to respond to the complex everyday experiences that lift us up and bring us down.
My name is Jess.
I have struggled with attending to prayer,
And I hope this little offering brings you closer to the Creator.
Today's meditation is on positive risk.
Let's start by taking just five big breaths together.
Deep breathing has been scientifically studied and found to change how we engage stress in situations.
It is good for slowing down,
Preparing for prayer,
But also a good practice for all kinds of situations we find ourselves in.
So let's take one minute and just feel yourself breathing.
That was 60 seconds.
If your mind went to other places in that time,
That's fine.
It's natural.
You're still here,
So let's move on.
As we start,
Take a moment to identify one person or situation that you are grateful for today.
We'll take a moment and out loud or in your head,
Express gratitude to God for that person or situation.
Positive risk is the realization of the need to trust God and put ourselves out there.
So often,
This is the ground of an active faith.
We're inspired to move in a direction that has some cost,
And we choose to leap knowing that God will catch us.
Some positive risks cost more than others.
That cost can be relational,
Vocational,
Or even financial and material,
But they're all spiritual,
And God is ready to meet us in those risks.
If you're able,
Put your arms out in front of you and turn your palms upward in a posture of release towards the Creator.
Our bodies are an important part of prayer.
The Christian scriptures tell us of a very practical spiritual opportunity.
Cast your cares towards the divine.
So imagine you wrote the positive risks on your horizon and your feelings about them on the palms of your hands as an act of submission.
What words would be there?
God,
We place into your hands these things on,
We give to you the risks before us and their impact on our life.
A lot of meditation teaches the necessary ability to release.
Let's also focus on what healthy things we put into the space of release.
So if we're releasing the nervousness and anxiety of taking a positive risk,
What do we need to take on?
As you close your hands and bring your arms back to your body,
What accompanying things do you need as you deal with having this kind of faith in your life?
How about assurances of God's love and care?
How about embracing a community to walk with you through this?
How about embracing the courage to leap?
Embracing helps us live into our purpose because it teaches us what Dorothy Day said,
That every act of faith increases our faith.
So in prayer,
We slow down and make commitments to our core foundations.
Spend a minute expressing to God how this opportunity for faith that's in front of you is impacting your life and what freedoms you want to live into.
God,
We accept the freedom that comes with submission to you.
We often fight against the very abundant life that you have for us.
So we accept the grace of leaping into the unknown for your grace to catch us.
Taking this time today did not change the step that you need to take that God has placed in front of you.
It may have changed your orientation towards that step,
Though.
You may need to take some greater actions of courage,
But the great spiritual writers of the Christian tradition often maintained that prayer's greatest gift is not that it suddenly changes situations,
But that it often changes us.
