This post pierced my heart. The Lord has been working on my heart about what REAL Christianity looks like in this hurting world…and He’s telling me that it means getting out of my comfort zone in order to allow others to be in theirs. When I think about your comment (“The invitation of faith is unnerving. Anything received without merit demands we leave the moorings we have always relied upon in order to discover a world yet unknown.”), I know that I’m not unmoored and unsettled enough to really allow God to work through me. I saved this post to re-read often to remind myself that feeling uncomfortable isn’t a bad thing. — Suzanne

Readers’ Choice (Originally published January 23, 2017)
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

Scripture: Genesis 24.40

But [Abraham] said to me, “The Lord, before whom I have walked, will send his angel with you and prosper your way. You shall take a wife for my son from my clan and from my father’s house.”

Reflection: Unsettled by Faith
The Park Forum

The closer Abraham drew to God, the more unsettled his life became. All of the fathers of faith were wandering creatures—their minds, souls, and bodies sojourning as the spirit led. And yet, time and again we read of the people of God trying to leverage God’s grace to create stability, comfort, and earthly benefit.

The great people of faith, like Mother Theresa and St. Francis of Assisi, among many others, purposefully held their lives in liminality—for this is where God moves. Richard Rohr explains:

We have to allow ourselves to be drawn out of “business as usual” and remain patiently on the “threshold” (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown.

There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible. It’s the realm where God can best get at us because our false certitudes are finally out of the way.

The invitation of faith is unnerving. Anything received without merit demands we leave the moorings we have always relied upon in order to discover a world yet unknown. Rohr concludes:

Because we have avoided liminal space, we have created a very smug and middle class kind of Christianity that has little wisdom or compassion to offer the world today. Much of the work of authentic spirituality and human development is to get people into liminal space and to keep them there long enough that they can learn something essential and new….

Most of us cannot run off to the wilderness or the hermitage forever. But spiritual traditions offer temporary and partial liminality in experiences like pilgrimages, urban plunges into different levels of society, silent retreats, extended periods of fasting, solitude in nature, and sacred times like Lent and Ramadan. There has to be something different and daring, even nonsensical, to break our comfortable sleepwalk and our compulsive cultural trance. Mere piety will never do it.

The Request for Presence
Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe; you are my crag and my stronghold.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 12-13 (Listen – 8:18)
Psalms 145 (Listen – 2:19)

I advocate prayer. I often forget to pray. I set times to pray. When those times come, I’m often perturbed that prayer is interrupting “something more important.” This post encouraged me again in prayer. — Steve

Readers’ Choice (Originally published June 22, 2017)
The edifices are growing. Yet prayer is decaying.

—Abraham Joshua Heschel

Scripture: Psalm 119.14-15

In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

Reflection: Finding Words to Pray
The Park Forum

“The true source of prayer is not an emotion but an insight,” observes Abraham Joshua Heschel in Man’s Quest for God. Yet our sources for insight often prove inconsistent or even unreliable. Cultures wax and wane, emotions churn, even our personal perspectives evolve. Nothing can eviscerate a prayer life more quickly than locating our sole source for insight inside ourselves.

“It is the insight into the mystery of reality, the sense of the ineffable, that enables us to pray,” says Heschel. So too, the psalmist who composed the longest chapter in scripture, Psalm 119. The overtone of the psalm is the confession of God’s word as the source of vitality, joy, and meaning in life. The undertone is the way meaningful prayer is sparked and fueled by insights found in his transcendent word.

The remedy for spiritual dryness is prayer saturated with scripture. When we pray the words of scripture they enliven our prayers by allowing God’s word to blossom inside our heart, mind, and soul. In An Exposition on Prayer in the Bible Jim Rosscup identified the psalmist’s record of this experience, verse-by-verse, in Psalm 119.

In regards to our daily experience, God’s words in prayer are, “purifying (verse 9), a treasure (11, 72), joy-inspiring (14), delighting (16), replete with wonderful things (18), counselors (24), enlivening (25), strengthening (28). They are freeing (45, 133), comforting (52), stimulating for melody (54), perfecting (80), life-encompassing (96), sweet dessert (103), light (105), an inheritance (111), and worth waiting for (114). Not only these, but they are protecting (117), provocative of hate toward evil (128), truthful (142), righteous (144), everlasting (160), awe-inspiring (161), peace-promoting (165), and love-kindling (167).”

To experience this first-hand, Rosscup suggest taking one eight-verse section of Psalm 119 and praying through it each day. “God saturates all the psalmist’s thoughts as he prays, and rekindles one’s passion for God just to pray the very verses as one’s own thoughts.”

The Call to Prayer
Proclaim the greatness of the Lord our God and worship him upon his holy hill; for the Lord our God is the Holy One.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 9 (Listen – 3:46)
Psalms 140-141 (Listen – 2:26)

This Weekend’s Readings
Joshua 10 (Listen – 7:23) Psalms 142-143 (Listen – 2:35)
Joshua 11 (Listen – 3:52) Psalms 144 (Listen – 1:56)

This makes me reset my perspective. — Jason

Readers’ Choice (Originally published June 9, 2017)
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

―J.R.R. Tolkien

Scripture: Psalm 100.1-2

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness!

Reflection: Hopes and Dreams
The Park Forum

In the late 1860’s Charles Feltman replaced the pie wagon he had pushed through the sand on Coney Island for years with a new one that could serve his latest creation: sausage wrapped in a pastry bun.

People were skeptical of what would become known as the hot dog, but the idea took off and Feltman built a restaurant that expanded rapidly. The Coney Island History Project reports that Feltman’s, “covered a full city block and consisted of nine restaurants, a roller coaster, a carousel, a ballroom, an outdoor movie theater, a hotel, a beer garden, a bathhouse, a pavilion, a Tyrolean village, two enormous bars, and a maple garden.”

Even after his death in 1910, the restaurant continued to expand—with over five million patrons in 1923 alone. If ever there was an institution that looked like it could last it was the dime-a-hotdog restaurant that could serve 8,000 people at a time and sat not far from the beach and newly-opened subway. But in less than a decade the Great Depression set in and business dried up quickly. Feltman’s family was soon faced with the task of closing the venues and selling off the land.

We strap our hopes and dreams to what looks most successful and trustworthy. Yet ventures succeed and fail—taking entrepreneurs, investors, employees, and families along with them. Far too many people end up wrought with strife and brokenness because they invest everything they are into things which are exposed as unworthy.

Psalm 100 is the closing Psalm in a series of psalms (starting at Psalm 93) that renders praise to God because he is sufficiently worthy of our praise, affection, and hope. Those who praise God are full of joy because worship centers their life in God’s presence—and better is one day in his presence than thousands elsewhere.

Our work on this earth might carry on beyond our lives—a Coney Island man recently opened a Feltman’s pop up—and is worthy of our time and energy. At the same time, we should guard ourselves from allowing vocation and success to become the object of our affection or the source of our hope and joy.

The Call to Prayer
Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands, serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 8 (Listen – 5:55)
Psalms 139 (Listen – 2:26)

This speaks to a practice that has become vital to my relationship with Christ, my growth as a believer–particularly my faith in God as my Father and my Lord (not just my genie or vending machine). That practice is, of course, a day of sabbath rest once every week. It takes discipline and planning to make it happen but I have no idea how I functioned without it previously.  — Sam

Readers’ Choice (Originally published April 19, 2017)
It must always be remembered that the Sabbath is not an occasion for diversion or frivolity; not a day to shoot fireworks or to turn somersaults, but an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; to collect rather than to dissipate time.

―Abraham Joshua Heschel

Scripture: Leviticus 23.3

[The Lord spoke to Moses saying,] “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.

Reflection: Tasting Eternity
By Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man.

Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.

The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work. “Last in creation, first in intention,” the Sabbath is “the end of the creation of heaven and earth.”

The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.

Three acts of God denoted the seventh day: He rested, He blessed, and He hallowed the seventh day. To the prohibition of labor is, therefore, added the blessing of delight and the accent of sanctity. Not only the hands of man celebrate the day; the tongue and the soul keep the Sabbath.

Labor is a craft, but perfect rest is an art. It is the result of an accord of body, mind, and imagination. To attain a degree of excellence in art, one must accept its discipline, one must adjure slothfulness. The seventh day is a palace in time which we build. It is made of soul, of joy and reticence. In its atmosphere, a discipline is a reminder of adjacency to eternity.

The Request for Presence
Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 7 (Listen – 4:58)
Psalms 137-138 (Listen – 2:13)

I find it wonderful (even slightly curious) that there is still room in our culture for a devotional series. — The Park Forum

Scripture: Psalm 133:1
How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!

Reflection: Transitions
by John Tillman

In Roman towns the forum bell would ring throughout the day. It marked the first hour at 6 AM, then the 3rd hour at 9 AM, and on through the day at the sixth hour, ninth hour, and finally at the end of the business day at 6 PM. Its purpose was to mark the work day, contributing to efficiently moving the empire and the economy forward.

But alongside that empire God’s kingdom moved, using the forum’s convenient chime to advance its devoted followers closer to God and closer to each other through spiritual practice including prayer and reading. The early church’s rhythmic practice of daily prayer and readings unified them across the known world.

Compared to today, the ringing forum bells of Rome may seem quaint and stately. Our empire runs on a technological litany of bells, beeps, dings, reminders, and pop-ups that push us toward a spinning whirl of profit, ROI, and materialism. Those in the marketplace feel a very real pressure to profit or die. This type of environment is exactly the place a respite in the rhythms of regular prayer and devotion is most needed.

Our purpose at The Park Forum is, and will continue to be, to aid believers working in the economy of a secular empire to hear the chime of God’s kingdom and to connect their spiritual practice to their practical, physical life.

It was Benedict who first said, “To pray is to work and to work is to pray.” In so doing he gave form to another of the great, informing concepts of Christian spirituality—the inseparability of spiritual life from physical life. — Phyllis Tickle in her Introduction to The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime

Reading The Park Forum may have started as an individual act of devotion, but just as the rhythm of daily prayer united early Christians across the geography of the Roman empire, we who are scattered across time zones are united by the communion we pursue.

There is value in celebrating our individual relationships to God and equity in the fact that each stands uniquely before God—loved not just collectively, but individually. But there is power in joining together in a communal celebration and a unified cry to God.

Though the voice may be different, the text we read and the God we seek communion with remain the same.

Readers’ Choice will begin July 5th. Follow this link to submit your favorite post from this past year.

The Cry of the Church
In the evening, in the morning, and at noonday, I will complain and lament, and he will hear my voice.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 5-6:5 (Listen – 7:25)
Psalm 132-134 (Listen – 2:22)