Month: February 2024

           Making a whip of cords,
           he drove all of them out of the temple.
           He also poured out the coins
           of the money changers and overturned their tables.
                         —John 2.15

This is no mere angry outburst. It’s way bigger:
prophetic, pointed street theater.
Theology thrown on you like ice water.

You start with shock,
and not just consternation, but outrage.
Blasphemy. Assault. Murder!

So it is when God upends your tables,
shouting, “Not this! Not this!”
—when it’s God you’re talking about.

You thought you understood God.
Had the right theology, right sacrifices.
But it’s overturned.

Let that feeling sit with you,
of having been robbed,
having been wronged.

This is how hard it is
to let go of graven images
and let God be God.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
                        —John 2.19

Where’s your temple?
What do you think is essential to your faith?
What do you absolutely need to be faithful?

Imagine you mess it up.
Or God ruins it.
Or life just sweeps it away like a natural disaster.

What if God is dead, the Bible is a hoax,
Jesus doesn’t come around,
church is worthless, and you can’t pray?

Now you’re ready to worship,
on hurting knees, helpless,
waiting, trusting.

The Risen One has been crucified before.
They know how to do this.
Just stay on your knees.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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I’m giving up being competent for Lent.
Shoulder surgery. One arm taking a Sabbath.
I enter the company of the disabled,
the wilderness of powerlessness,
a Lenten fast from being able,
a shedding of self-sufficiency,
the spiritual practice of going slow,
the discipline of humbly depending.
I can’t do this by myself,
most to the point of Jesus’ teaching.
I am the traveler in the ditch,
dependent on Samaritans.
Others grow food for me, drive for me,
zip my coat for me, die for me.
I am provided for. Everything is a gift.
This is my Lenten fast:
Be, without doing.
Trust, without proving.
Receive, without deserving.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
                        —John 2.16

We too often have a faith of exchanges:
I’m good, and God blesses me.

But this is not so.
Everything is a gift.

If your purse has been cleaned out,
if you have nothing to offer,

what then, but your humble need,
and God’s generous grace?

The real challenge is to learn
to overturn your own tables.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           What will it profit you to gain the whole world
           and forfeit your life?
           Indeed, what can you give in return for your life?
                        —Mark 8.36-37

God, you pour out Life in a radiant stream,
flowing through my days, through this world,
at the heart of all things.
I confess I abandon it.
I turn from the You of life to the Me of my mind;
I slip out of the We of human family,
away from the Us of Creation, and forfeit real life.
Earnestly making, proving and defending myself,
I cut myself off from you, my only source of life.
I don’t even show up.
Here in my hands I have everything the world sells.
And it’s junk.

I repent.
Give me a spirit of gratitude and trust,
to receive your grace.
Give me a heart of love, to love boldly,
and so find in my hands life, true life.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Those who want to save their life will lose it,
          and those who lose their life for my sake,
          and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
                         —Mark 8.35

  
God, I don’t have the strength to fail.
I don’t have the courage to let go.
I don’t have the life in me to die.
I am asking you to wound me.
I need to be broken-hearted.
I need the humility to receive your grace.
I need to be cracked open.

Of course… you are already working within me, aren’t you?
The strong walls I have around me
are really an illusion, aren’t they?

Light, and a gentle breeze,
enter through an open door.

Here and now… I will kneel.
I will trust.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The body of the woman floating down the Rio Grande,
child in her arms, not her own, but whom she had pledged
to carry to safety.

The girl in Afghanistan, wondering if she will have a boyfriend
before she is raped.

The Indonesian boy, maybe 13, enslaved, laboring in the bowels
of the shrimp factory far at sea, who hasn’t seen his family,
or land, in two years.

The black man, strapped by the incomprehensible
to the gurney behind the prison glass.

If you don’t kneel and bow your forehead to the ground
before them, you haven’t yet been to the foot of the cross.

Pierced by the suffering of the innocent,
and your part in it, and meeting the divine there,
you behold the cross.

When you kneel, you kneel, you bow,
but it is God who draws your forehead to the ground.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Loving One,
free me from my self-enclosure,
to trust I am fully loved and heard,
so I can love and hear others.
Help me to be fully present, to be aware of myself,
my reactions, my wounds and fears and filters,
and to mindfully, lightly, hold them aside,
so I can be fully present for others,
truly listening, opening a space in me
for them to be safe, to be true, to be free.
May I be a spacious and welcoming presence,
to offer people the precious gift of being heard,
being seen, being witnessed.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
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God, give me heart to hold the trembling hand
of one who is in pain, to sit with their pain,
to hold their trembling.
Give me faith to stand in the wound of the world
and hold the edges, be the healing bond.
Give me courage to risk the stones, standing
with one who’s being stoned by hate and fear.
Give me love to forgive the one who’s caused me pain
whose pain was too great to bear alone.
Give me spirit to give myself to healing, though it hurt,
to blessing, though it cost.
Christ be in me to suffer for the sake of love,
knowing that any cross I bear is yours,
who carry all the weight, and labor by my side.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           The Spirit immediately drove him
           out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days,
           tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts;
           and the angels waited on him.
                         —Mark 1.12-13


Spirit is a shape-shifter.

    The secret overpowering guide that drives us
where we otherwise wouldn’t have gone,
and discover blessing.
    The wilderness, the holy absence that envelops us,
the arms of dust and sand that receive us.
    The span of time, enough to lose ourselves,
enough to be delivered into God’s hands.
    Satan, masquerading as someone else’s fault,
until we see ourselves, the lie of our alienation.
    Wild beasts, untamed energies,
inviting humility, awareness, acceptance.
    Angels, the way love and grace hide in this world,
so close to us, so attentive, so generous.

All of it is Spirit, transforming moment by moment,
transforming our desires.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:40 — 2.3MB)

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