Hello,
Friends.
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in docks.
Welcome.
To God is day 26.
And today we're going to continue on from yesterday's idea of God is freedom.
And talk about God is.
Invitation.
And as we prepare to do this,
I invite you.
To sit and to stew yourself.
If it's safe,
Close your eyes,
Take a nice deep breath in.
Then allow your breathing to find its natural rhythm.
Mindfully bring yourself fully into this moment,
Heart,
Body,
Soul.
The invitation is here just for this short period of time to be still and know that God is here.
As we ask the Spirit to speak to us.
And we open our ears,
Our minds and our hearts to those words today.
Now I've been thinking about the difference between a command and an invitation.
Commands say do this,
But an invitation.
.
.
Says things like,
Come and see.
And what's interesting is that a command can be obeyed and the heart never has to be involved.
But an invitation,
An invitation asks for something a little bit more from us.
It asks us to respond.
But to do so.
Leaving some room for freedom.
And this might be one of the most interesting ways to think about God,
That God is invitation.
That is to say,
God whose presence itself.
Is an invitation into greater life,
That life of abundance that Jesus talked about in John 10.
Now I've been sitting.
.
.
With a question for some time now that I've been contemplating.
What is God inviting me to notice for the sake of love?
I like that question because it changes the whole posture,
If you like,
Of the spiritual life.
It means that we don't start at belief.
Or doing something or penance or anything like that.
It actually starts with what am I being invited to notice in this moment?
And I think God is always inviting us into a greater awareness.
Both through the Hebrew texts and in the Christian Testament we see things like,
Look here,
Notice this,
Pay attention.
Listen,
Stay,
Love,
Let go,
Come closer.
Step outside of your usual way of seeing.
It's kind of like rather than being God shouting down from the clouds,
You know,
All these instructions for us,
That Revelation is more like that still small voice that's just inviting us to be in the moment and to look again at what's around us.
Jesus seems to teach like this.
He points.
He says,
Look at the birds,
Look at the lilies.
Look at the sower,
Look at the seed,
Look at the child,
Look at the person that you've learned to overlook,
Look again.
Jesus changes what people are capable of seeing with these questions.
And I think that's what spiritual transformation actually is.
It's learning to see differently.
Think about it.
How much of our lives are determined by what we notice,
By what we hear.
See and pay attention to.
Because we can look around an area and while our eyes will detect everything.
We won't notice everything.
Two people can walk through the exact same neighbourhood.
And inhabit two completely different worlds,
Seeing completely different things.
One will see traffic and the other person will see people.
The other one sees a homeless person.
And then another one sees someone whose story they don't know.
One person will see a tree.
On personal sea and inconvenience.
Another one will say something else.
That's beautiful,
Another person will see an opportunity to practice patience.
One person walking through this might begin to wonder.
What might this person be carrying?
The external world.
Hasn't changed for the two people who are walking through this area with these completely different and at some times totally opposite thoughts.
But their perception is different.
And God's constantly inviting us into this kind of changed perception.
And this is why I don't think spirituality is primarily about adding more religious information to our lives.
We can know an enormous amount about God and still fail to notice God.
We can know scripture and miss the person standing right in front of us.
We can go to worship and remain completely distracted from love.
You can become an expert in theology if you want to,
But you can still miss the mystery.
Spiritual maturity,
I think,
Then,
Is about becoming capable of noticing,
Of noticing God and presence and beauty.
Even noticing suffering.
Noticing moments of grace,
Noticing our own reaction to things.
Noticing those moments where God is asking love to move us to do something.
Noticing where we've become closed off,
Noticing where we're being invited to become more alive in the moment.
And keep in mind.
God really forces the invitation like we've said.
Think about an invitation to dinner.
It can be accepted.
Or declined.
Or completely ignored altogether.
The invitation is still there.
It doesn't stop being an invitation just because you don't respond.
And God's invitations are like that.
Persistent.
Passion.
Unhurried,
That quiet nudge,
That little restlessness you feel.
The person who crosses your path,
The line in that book.
That moment of beauty,
The difficult conversation,
The sudden awareness.
The question that won't leave you alone.
We might call these things coincidence.
We might call them intuition.
We might call them interruptions,
We might even call them grace.
Sometimes they're just life,
And sometimes they're ways of waking us up to the reality of God around us,
Within us,
And among us.
And this gives us a very different understanding of discernment.
Because most people think of discernment as,
What does God want me to do?
But maybe the questions that go along with the sermon are more like,
Where is life opening?
Where is love inviting me?
What am I being asked to notice?
What am I resisting?
What might become possible if I stopped trying to control the outcome?
And they're very different questions.
And they place us in relationship with God rather than under God's surveillance.
Something.
Just wonderfully ordinary.
About an invitation.
I don't think God's in the business of giving us five-year plans.
But God is inviting us into this moment.
Into this conversation,
This act of kindness,
This letting go,
This step,
This breath.
And so far from being a map,
The spiritual life is a series of invitations.
Come,
Look,
Listen,
Stay,
Follow.
Love.
We don't have to know where all of this is going.
We only need to become attentive enough to respond to what's being asked of us.
Which brings us back to the question,
What is God inviting me to notice for the sake of love?
And the invitation?
Is to hold on to that today,
Just sit with it.
Maybe.
.
.
Try not to come to an answer at all,
Or if it does come,
Don't force it to come quickly.
Let the question become a way of seeing,
Because God is the one continually inviting us.
More deeply into the life we are already living.
And may grace,
Peace and love be with us and hold us and embrace us.
And dance with us.
As we live fully into the invitation of this life today and always.
Grace and peace,
Friends.
Until tomorrow.
Bye for now.
