Transitions

  • July 3, 2017
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  • John Tillman

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)

The Efficacy of Prayer

  • June 29, 2017
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  • Park Forum

For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.

―C.S. Lewis

Scripture: Psalm 120.1

In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.

Reflection: The Efficacy of Prayer
By C.S. Lewis (1956)

The thing we pray for may happen, but how can you ever know it was not going to happen anyway? Even if the thing were indisputably miraculous it would not follow that the miracle had occurred because of your prayers.

If an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable “success” in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine of prayer at all. It would prove something much more like magic—a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.

The very question “Does prayer work?” puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset.

“Work”: as if it were magic, or a machine—something that functions automatically. Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person.

Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from that revelation. What He does is learned from what He is.

Petitionary prayer is, nonetheless, both allowed and commanded to us: “Give us our daily bread.” And no doubt it raises a theoretical problem. Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men?

It is not really strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God’s mind—that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.

Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. If our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, we had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.

— Excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ (wonderful essay) The Efficacy of Prayer.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Behold, God is my helper; it is the Lord who sustains my life. —Psalm 54:4

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 1 (Listen – 3:11)
Psalm 120-122 (Listen – 2:02)

 

The Object of Hope

  • June 28, 2017
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  • Park Forum

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.

―Thomas Aquinas

Scripture: Psalm 119.166

I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments.

Reflection: The Object of Hope
By Thomas Aquinas

Petition is an expression of hope, since it is said in Ps. 37:5: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.” But it is plain from the Lord’s Prayer that one may pray to God not only for eternal blessedness, but also for the good things of this present life, both spiritual and temporal, and for deliverance from evils which will have no place in eternal blessedness. It follows that eternal blessedness is not the proper object of hope.

The good which we should properly and principally hope to receive from God is eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God. We ought indeed to hope for nothing less than himself from God, since the goodness by which he bestows good things on a creature is nothing less than his essence. The proper and principal object of hope is therefore eternal blessedness.

Eternal blessedness does not enter into the heart of man perfectly, in such a way that the wayfarer may know what it is, or of what kind it is. But a man can apprehend it under the universal idea of perfect good, and in this way the movement of hope arises. It is therefore with point that the apostle says in Hebrews: “we have hope… which enters into that within the veil,” since what we hope for is yet veiled, as it were.

We ought not to pray to God for any other good things unless they relate to eternal blessedness. Hope is therefore concerned principally with eternal blessedness, and secondarily with other things which are sought of God for the sake of it, just as faith also is concerned principally with such things as relate to God.

All other things seem small to one who sets his heart on something great. To one who hopes for eternal life, therefore, nothing else appears arduous in comparison with this hope. But some other things can yet be arduous in relation to the capacity of him who hopes. There can accordingly be hope in regard to them, as things subservient to the principal object of hope.

*Excerpted and language updated from Whether Eternal Blessedness is the Proper Object of Hope.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Protect my life and deliver me; let me not be put to shame, for I have trusted in you. —Psalm 25.19

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 33-34 (Listen – 6:35)
Psalm 119:145-176 (Listen – 15:14)

 

Finding Freedom

  • June 27, 2017
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  • Park Forum

In all our own “freedom,” we actually seek one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.

― Søren Kierkegaard

Scripture: Ps 119.134

Redeem me from man’s oppression, that I may keep your precepts.

Reflection: Finding Freedom
By Søren Kierkegaard

People want to eliminate injunctions and constraints in order to play the game of being independent. But to eliminate every constraint, to loosen every bond, meant at best to make it as free and as convenient as possible for everyone to have no conscience while imagining that he had one.

All this talk about eliminating constraint comes either from the coddled or from those who perhaps once felt the power to fight but are now exhausted and find it nicer to have all constraints taken away.

In staring fixedly at freedom of choice instead of choosing, we lose both freedom and freedom of choice. The most tremendous thing given to a human being is choice—freedom. If you want to rescue and keep it, there is only one way–in the very same second unconditionally in full attachment give it back to God and yourself along with it.

If the sight of what is given to you tempts you, if you surrender to the temptation and look with selfish craving at freedom of choice, then you lose your freedom. And your punishment then is to go around in a kind of confusion and brag about having freedom of choice.

Woe to you, this is the judgment upon you. You have free­dom of choice, you say, and yet you have not chosen God. Then you become ill; freedom of choice becomes your fixed idea. Fi­nally you become like the rich man morbidly imagining that he has become impoverished and will die of want. You sigh that you have lost the freedom of choice, and the mistake is merely that you do not sorrow deeply enough so that you get it back again.

Who does not want to be free? Wishing to be free is an easy mat­ter, but wishing is the most paltry and unfree of all performances.

Prayer: The Greeting

With my whole heart I seek you; let me not stray from your commandments. —Psalm 119.10

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 32 (Listen – 7:10)
Psalm 119:121-144 (Listen – 15:14)

 

The Greatest Things

  • June 26, 2017
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  • Park Forum

To rejoice in temporal comforts is dangerous, to rejoice in self is foolish, to rejoice in sin is fatal, but to rejoice in God is heavenly.

―Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Scripture: Psalm 119.103

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Reflection: The Greatest Things
The Park Forum

Near the peak of a late-night ratings battle a few years ago The Tonight Show hosted Jerry Seinfeld. Just prior to the comedy legend’s five minute set, the show had announced that everyone in the audience would receive a television as a prize for attending the taping.

Seinfeld began his set laughing that the audience was so happy about receiving a TV—it is likely everyone already owned a TV, and absolute that every TV would, one day, end up in the trash. “All things on earth only exist in different stages of becoming garbage,” Seinfeld quipped.

He then challenged the audience to think about the journey nearly every object we buy takes. Most things start in a visible place then move to a closet or drawer, and before becoming trash many things make a stop in our garage or storage unit. He joked, “That’s why we have those, so we don’t have to see the huge mistakes that we’ve made.”

If we stop and think about the areas we’ve succeeded—whether money, possessions, accomplishment, or accolade—they almost always let us down. There is a “this is it?” moment when we realize that which we set our hearts upon is really just dust.

“David had a great deal of gold and silver, far more than any of us have; but yet he thought very little of it in comparison with God’s law,” Charles Spurgeon notes in his commentary Psalm 119.

Many people despise gold and silver because they have not got any. The fox said the grapes were sour because they were beyond his reach. But here is a case, in which a man had as much gold and silver as he could ever want.

Success and riches are lovely things—how wonderful is it that God created us to experience them? But David also knew they were insufficient for the greater things God created our hearts to know.

Seinfeld, in jest, suggests our solution is to become a “thrower-outer.” Adding, “I wish there was a store where I could buy something, pivot and just throw it down the incinerator.”

The Psalmist solution, in earnest, is that we love God more than our prize possessions and accomplishments. For, as Spurgeon concludes, “Riches often take to themselves wings, and fly away; even great wealth may soon be spent and gone; but God’s law never leaves those who love it, nor lets them lose it.”

Prayer: The Request for Presence

O Lord, my God, my Savior, by day and night I cry to you. Let my prayer enter into your presence. —Psalm 88.1-2

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 31 (Listen – 4:57)
Psalm 119:97-120 (Listen – 15:14)