IX. God Continually Calls Me by Name

You listen in prayer.  You are accomplishing this with Scripture by using the simple way: Have a passage chosen, take it and lip-read it or read it softly aloud.  Then you put it down and recall the words and phrases.  You let them, one by one, stay in your mind, musing over each in turn, always ready to speak to God our Lord and to hear Him speak to you.  This fosters a listening attitude.

God creates you in concrete circumstances and with definite gifts and charisms.  Without tyranny, God our Creator and Lord plants in you not only gifts and limitations that add up to some definite choices in your life, but also the desires leading to those definite choices.  Your task as a creature is to find what God desires in you, down at the root of your self, and freely to enact your own deepest desires.  When we do this, we are godlike.  This is our profoundest joy and happiness.

When you ask God for a gift - an attitude, a way of doing things, an achievement - you implicitly commit yourself to the interior changes that gift will bring or demand.

SCRIPTURE READINGS
Ephesians 2:1-10
My whole life and self are God’s work of art.  God Himself chose to accomplish this.
Sometimes I live as though I were not being called by God.
Genesis 22:1-19
Here is a story of a person who proved willing to give up the most precious thing in his life.
Repetition:
Look back in on the black holes where nothing happened, or the volcanoes where you found the love of God and light and insight.
Isaiah 6:1-13
Isaiah finds himself summoned by the Lord God.  Who am I to be called by God?
I am ready to bring the Reign of God to my world.
Romans 8:28-39
I cannot imagine the way things can be.  But the universe holds no power comparable to God.
The Lord shapes all things to my good, whom He calls.
Repetition:
Again, look back in on the black holes and the volcanoes.
Repetition of the week:
Read through your journal and review the deserts - where you could not find God - and any deep insights given to you by God’s grace during this past week.

PRAYER FOR THIS WEEK
Almighty and ever watchful God,
You are the beginning and the end, alpha and omega.
You start all things, and bring all things back to Yourself.
For no living creature can make itself come to be;
no living being wakes itself from nothingness.
Nothing in me could have made You love me
or forced You to want me to be.
Since before I came to be,
You have loved me with an everlasting love,
and now Your totally free love burns at the core of my self.
I acknowledge You, Creator and Lord,
once at the start of all things and always,
all days, as the beginning of all things.
You alone are Lord,
living and reigning forever and ever.
Amen.