Welcome.
Welcome to you with whatever you carry in your heart.
Welcome with whatever burden is yours.
You are welcome here in whatever season of life you are living.
For life has its seasons.
There is the winter with its cold blasts and its long darkness and its frozen snows that melt into spring,
Into the first birdsongs of spring,
When buds once more appear on the trees and children run and play,
The black night of disappointment and the gloom of depression.
This is one of the seasons that most if not all of us can expect to come and go in our lifetimes.
At times life takes us where we do not want to go.
It will take us where we watch our horizons disappear.
At times it will take us to where we lose our world or where we lose our loved ones who meant so much to us.
It will take us to where we convince ourselves that we are no longer worthy of love.
Or to where our health fails us.
Or perhaps at times to where we simply feel down in the dumps and hopeless for some reason that completely escapes us.
Or even to where we feel disappointed by God himself.
For me a stroke when I was 21 melted into years of emotional struggles,
A season of darkness and doubt.
When we are despondent it may seem that the seasons have stopped,
That the gentle breezes of spring will never again bless our life.
And it's when our life seems stopped,
When it seems frozen in discouragement,
That we most need to know we are not alone.
We long for the warmth and the assurance of Jesus' tender care.
In the darker seasons of our life we need to come home.
Our first impulse is to flee,
To run away from the pain.
But the road to healing and wholeness runs right through our heart.
In these seasons of our life we need to come home.
In this short meditation we are going to come home in a very simple way.
So I invite you to take a deep breath,
To hold it and then to let it out with a sigh.
Take another deep breath and tighten every muscle in your body that you can.
Hold your breath and then let it out.
Relax.
Intentionally relax the muscles in your face,
Your shoulders,
Your arms,
Your legs.
Just relax.
And very quietly offer a prayer of gratitude.
Find one or two things in your life for which you can offer gratitude.
As we come home to ourselves we are going to focus in this meditation on the way that awareness of our senses and sense perceptions can be a powerful way to quieting our whole being before God.
And as we pray we are going to leave longer and longer pauses for silence.
Almost stretching the outer limits of our comfort zone just a little each time.
So that in that silence we can stop running and we can come home to our heart to rest.
That heart in which God lives.
That heart that is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
So I invite you to begin by noticing simply what you hear.
What do you hear around you?
What sounds are close by?
What sounds are further away?
Do not let any sound escape your notice.
Just soak them all in.
And as you can leave behind memories,
Worries,
Imaginations of the future and live in the present moment in which you hear in this moment.
Breathe deeply and allow yourself to be.
I invite you now to turn within yourself and as it were with spiritual hearing to hear what is within you.
Are they loud noises or are they gentle?
Do you hear chaos or order?
Do not be afraid of what you hear.
Just stay with it.
Now for just a moment ask yourself what can you hear beyond the sounds you hear?
What holds the sounds?
What holds the noise within you?
What is larger than you?
Just notice.
Ask Jesus to show you what he wants you to know from this experience.
Now open your eyes and notice what is around you.
What do you see?
What colors do you see?
What objects?
What shapes?
What textures?
What do you notice about the room or the space you are in?
Choose one thing and look really closely at it.
Every aspect of it as if it were the only thing in the world for you right now.
What do you see?
And notice how this very attentive and intentional seeing has an effect on your whole being.
Now as you turn within yourself,
Open the eyes of your heart.
That spiritual sight of seeing deeply.
Of seeing beyond what can be seen.
Of seeing horizons that our eyes are unable to see.
To come to know what is beyond our physical senses.
To see what is beyond this season of your life.
To see what holds you in this season of your life.
Ask Jesus what he wants you to know from this experience.
As we come to an end,
Ask God to bring up into your memory one moment at any point in your life in which you felt God near to you.
In which you knew that God existed.
That he cared for you.
Offer a prayer of gratitude.
It is a reminder that the seasons change.
That you are not frozen in the part of your life where you are living right now.
That the darkness does give way to the dawn and the winter to the spring.
That there is hope.
That there is a God who is larger than any of us and all of us together.
Who holds us in his arms.
Who suffers with us as we suffer.
Who leads us through the valleys,
Through the darkness,
To where we will find true light and a deeper hope.
Lord Jesus,
We trust in you.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Take care of everything.
Amen.
