Month: October 2020

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
This is God’s doing—marvelous in our eyes!
—Matthew 21.42 (Ps. 118)

What the world in its materialism overlooks,
and in its violence rejects,
what the world accounts as nothing—
yet what God’s heart is set on:

the spirit in you the world can’t see,
the beautiful endurance the world can’t mar;
the divine presence it can’t accept
though it is not the world’s to judge;

the heart your suffering has tried to break,
the tenderness your struggles have tried to ruin,
the nobility your torments have tried to destroy:
they prevail, with God’s delight and confidence.

The Crucified One lives in you
and all the world’s mocking and its cruel graves
can’t keep the Risen One in you
from living, living on, in love, in hope, in glory.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

October 2, 2020

 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 
For in six days the Holy One made heaven and earth,
but rested the seventh day.
—Exodus 20.8, 11

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy.
Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,
and the Holy One your God brought you out.
—Deuteronomy 5.12, 15

Not a day of piety and churchy things.
A day of emptiness.
God is doing the work. You are not.
You think you are more indispensable than God?
Let it go.
You have been freed from slavery,
so don’t act like a slave.
Honor your liberation, and take a day off.
Sabbath is an act of rebellion
against the pharaoh of forced labor that is in our heads.
It’s a strike. Join the strike, for the sake of all those who labor.

We empty ourselves, and wait.
Letting God and nothing else fill our time.
Letting time be a gift. Not an oppression.
Being unimportant, unproductive, irrelevant.
Being an empty canvas for God,
the warm silence of a recording studio for God.
Time to sit and receive, and to wait.
Time to behold the holiness
of the Silence at the heart of all things.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

October 1, 2020