Summer Boldness w/ God | I Wrestle w/ God & I Hope to Lose

Jacob Wrestling with God by Jack Baumgartner

"But as for me, it is good to be near God. 

 I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge; 

I will tell of all Your deeds."

+ Psalm 73:28

During some seasons, it seems God wants to personally remind me of something that He has said to me before and I need to hear again.

Psalm 73 was highlighted again for me at Abbey of Gethsemani, and shortly thereafter I returned to Nikos Kazantzakis' time at the monastery on Mount Athos (Greek Orthodox Church spiritual center since the 10th century). One moment in particular continues to grab my attention when Kazantzakis engaged an old monk who had a reputation for holiness.

In light of the powerful Scripture verse above, which ends Psalm 73 (a psalm of wrestling with God), along with the profound story of Kazantzakis and the old monk at Mount Athos provided below, I am reminded I need to be praying the Surrender Novena prayer again:

 "Jesus, I surrender; 

You take care of it."

I continue to wrestle with Jesus as He turns my tables over again in His zeal for me as part of His Father's house (ex. John 2:13-22), remembering these words from Ronald Rolheiser:

We would do well to integrate this, 

the concept of wrestling with God, 

into our understanding of faith and prayer. 

We honor neither ourselves 

nor the scriptures 

when we make things too simple. ...

... the heart has complexities 

that need to be respected, 

even as we try to rein in 

its more possessive longings. 

God, who built us, 

understands this 

and is up to the task of 

wrestling with us and our resistance.

The classical mystics speak of something 

they call “being bold with God”. 

This “boldness”, they suggest, 

comes not at the beginning 

of the spiritual journey, 

but more towards the end of it, 

when, after a long period of fidelity, 

we are intimate enough with God 

to precisely be “bold”, 

as friends who have known each other 

for a long time have a right to be.

 "I Wrestle with God and I Hope to Lose!"

At Mount Athos in Report to Greco 

by Nikos Kazantzakis

As a young man, 

I spent a summer in a monastery 

during which I had 

a series of conversations with an old monk. 

One day I asked the old monk: 

“Father, do you still do battle with the devil?” 

The old monk replied: 

“No, I used to, when I was younger, 

but now I have grown old and tired and

the devil has grown old and tired with me. 

I leave him alone and he leaves me alone.” 

“So your life is easy then?” 

I remarked. 

“Oh no,” replied the monk, 

“it’s much worse, 

now I wrestle with God!”

“You wrestle with God,” 

I said surprised, 

“and hope to win?” 

“No,” replied the old monk, 

“I wrestle with God and I hope to lose!”

Jacob Wrestling with God by Chris Cook

For more posts on wrestling with God:

+ Becoming Who We Are

+ The Art of Other Seeing

+ Wrestling with God in Prayer

May God's Kingdom come, His will be done.

Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne, 

que sa volonté soit faite.

愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。

Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.

Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino! 

🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇

With wild grace and holy shalom,

Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Abbey Awe | Lauds of Room for Good Things to Run Wild

Room for Good Things to Run Wild

Holy Imaginations,

minds and hearts 

and souls and bodies saturated in

the Beautiful story of God,

are the tools of transformation.

+ Room for Good Things

to Run Wild

To close the month of May 2025, I had the joy of returning to the Abbey of the Genesee, one of my favorite thin spaces, for a special time with friends old and new at the Benedictine monastery, as we focused on the hours of prayer, infused with Psalms throughout.

On the evening that the Great Silence began for our group (24+ hours of silence together at the monastery), I had planned to keep my phone off for the entire duration. But since I was sharing my room with two other men who were already asleep in the still darkness when I made my way to bed, I turned on my phone for a flashlight and noticed I had a text. 

I could have ignored it, but I was wondering if something might have come up at home at this late hour that my wife or one of my kids needed to contact me (ex. our oldest daughter has just earned her driving license, so new adventures in parenting have been added to the mix), so I checked. These were the words I first read:

Hey, Sweetheart, if you get this

before you go to bed this evening,

would you call me or 

(our oldest daughter) back?

Acknowledging the places my mind could go, I noticed another text with these words featured in a snapshot of a conversation with my oldest daughter and one of her friends from childhood:

Friend: Hi, can you help me?

Daughter: What's up, love?

Friend: I really want to find God

and give myself to Him

but I have no clue where to start.

Daughter: You're serious?

(tearful and cry emojis)

Friend: Yes, ma'am.

I've been thinking about it a lot.

Daughter: I'd love to help.

Do you want to come over tomorrow?

What made you start thinking about it?

These words were then followed by:

Papa, can you call me back?

It was close to midnight then, and I sensed that God was inviting me to trust Him in how His Spirit was at work in my daughter and her friend while I was in solitude and silence for the next 20+ hours. 

And I trusted that in this space, the communion of saints would be stirred to pray for my daughter and her friend, too, in ways that are infused by the Spirit with groans beyond words.

Abbey of the Genesee Prayers at Night

So I prayed before I went to bed.

I prayed while I was in bed.

Awakened through the night,

I sought to join the whisper of God.

And then I woke 

and went to the sanctuary

to pray for my daughter

and her friend during Lauds

with the monks and others.

Lauds
come just before dawn …
It is the hour that takes us
from darkness into light —
awakening to life, to God.

And in that morning hour of prayer

God seemed to answer 

as the Holy Spirit used 

the exact Psalms from Scripture

for that specific Thursday morning 

sunrise hour of prayer to 

answer back through

the communal prayers of the saints

at Genesee and around the world.

+ Psalm 81:6-7
(as words God is speaking /

will speak to Zoey's friend,

a voice she's learning to recognize)

A voice I did not know said to me:

"I freed your shoulder

from the burden.

Your hands were freed 

from the load.

You called in distress and

I saved you."

+ Psalm 80:1, 3-4

(as words I and my family

were praying for this friend)

O Shepherd of Israel,

hear us ...

O LORD, rouse up Your might,

O LORD, come to our help.

God of hosts, bring us

(bring this friend and her family)

back; let Your face shine

on us (and them) and

we shall be saved.

The night before and that morning in bed, I had been thinking of and praying for Jesus to be the Good Shepherd to this young woman. And then I woke up to pray with the communion of saints at the monastery that morning in Psalm 80: "O Shepherd of Israel, hear us ... " 

And then shortly thereafter during the Terce hour of prayer:

Terce

is the marker of midmorning.

It was at this “third hour”

on the day of Pentecost

that the Spirit came

to the early Christian community,

as the enabling Power of their witness

the prayers, including those of the Abbott, were focused on Jesus being the Good Shepherd whose sheep hear His voice as He continues to gather more and more people to His fold. 

All this occurred while I was reading Josh Nadeau's book, Room for Good Things to Run Wild: How Ordinary People Become Every Day Saints, the title of which is based on G.K. Chesterton's quote:

The more I considered Christianity,

the more I found that 

while it had established a rule and order,

the chief aim of that order

was to give room for good things

to run wild.

After we broke the silence together that night to share about our experiences and receive the Eucharist together, I shared with the brothers I was with about who and what I had praying for throughout the night and day, and how they had unknowingly been participating with me in praying for this young women when they prayed during Lauds that morning.

Cultivate Renewal, Abbey of the Genesee, May 2025 A.D.

Multiple men were moved to tears, and then multiple men prayed for this friend of my oldest daughter. And then I received a call.

I just wanted to share with you, Papa,

that my friend prayed to receive

the Holy Spirit after I shared with her

about Jesus through the Story of God.

A stirring and a stillness dropped into the waters of my soul then. And the ripples are still being felt. I will get to spend some time with my wife, my daughter, and her friend over a meal soon to hear more of the impact of this seeming moment when heaven drew near to earth and people were transformed by the mystery of the Master who resurrects new things to life. 

But for now, I leave you with these words I continue to meditate on:

Take a moment to listen,

to hear the Hidden Music,

and where Jesus might be leading you,

all the ways He wants to heal you 

and transform you,

all the ways He wants

to make His Kingdom known;

and then have the courage

to take a step. 

To follow.

It will be hard,

the hardest thing you ever do,

but it will be an adventure,

and it will be Good,

and it will lead you Home.

+ Josh Nadeau,

Room for Good Things

to Run Wild,

pg. 258

Bonus Post on Prayer:

+ What's the Point of Prayer?

More Abbey Awe Posts:  

+ Awakening to New Wonder in Vigils

+ Finding God in a Thin Place

+ God Moves Thru Unlikely Saints  

+ Facing Death w/ "Of Gods & Men" 

Gloria Patri

4th Century Church

Adapted by New Life,

2022 A.D.

How lovely all creation shines,

How glorious from sky to sea.

All beauty is a blazing sign

To God the Everlasting.

Glory to the Father,

Glory to the Son,

Glory to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning,

As it is right now,

And will be forever,

World without end.

Amen.

The glory of Almighty God,

The centerpiece of all that is.

The selflessness of triune love,

Demands our highest worship.

(Chorus)

Amen, amen, amen,

World without end,

Amen.

When we behold the radiant Son,

The shadowlands will fade away.

At last the One who is to come

Will rule the new creation.

He’ll rule the new creation.

(Chorus)

With presence and peace in Christ,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Abbey Awe | Blessed with Joy and Presence in Terce Psalms

Joy on the Soapstone Trail Near St. Mary's Monastery & St. Scholastica Priory

Cultivating joy

is an act of resistance

to any person, event, or system

that would have us believe

that death has the final word on our lives.

+ Willie James Jennings,

There is Great Joy in Our Darkest Hours

To close the month of May 2024, I had the honor to help host another St. Mary's Monastery & St. Scholastica's Priory retreat with people from Congregational, Baptistic, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Anglican backgrounds, for a special time at the monastery, even getting to see Br. Isidore again, as we focused on the Benedictine rhythms of prayer, infused with Psalms throughout.

Before we arrived, everyone was invited to read, meditate on, and memorize Psalm 63:1-5 to prepare for this sacred time together: 

Psalm 63

1 God, You are my God,
earnestly I seek You;
I thirst for You,
my whole being longs for You,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water:

2 I have seen You in the sanctuary
and beheld Your power and Your glory.
3 Because Your love is better than life,
my lips will praise You.

4 I will praise You as long as I live,
and in Your name I will lift up my hands.

5 I will be fully satisfied
as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise You.
 

St. Mary's Monastery and St. Scholastica Priory Sanctuary in Petersham, MA

 On previous retreats, the practices of reading and praying the Psalms, especially connected to compline and prayer in the night with the monasteries, have proven life-giving for me. But this time, it was the mid-morning prayer hour of terce immediately after the mass that blessed me the most. Below is some brief background related to the different prayer hours during the morning provided in Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things:

The “morning” journey(s) are
when our day starts and
where our life begins
with all its potential and challenges.

The “time before our own time”
— Vigils —
is the time for us to address
our Creator with thanks and openness.

Lauds
come just before dawn …
It is the hour that takes us
from darkness into light —
awakening to life, to God.

Terce
is the marker of midmorning.
It was at this “third hour”
on the day of Pentecost
that the Spirit came
to the early Christian community,
as the enabling Power of their witness.

In the monastery
Terce
is time to take a break from busy work,
time to receive a midmorning blessing
with a focus on the Spirit
and the aliveness of His presence.

Before I arrived at St. Mary's Monastery, a theme I thought God wanted me to focus on was joy in His presence and cultivating joy as an act of resistance throughout this year. And so when I lingered after the mass at 9:30 a.m. the first morning we were there, returning to the faint aroma of incense in the simple, yet beautiful sanctuary, I could only smile when these were the verses from the Psalms I was invited to meditate on in both Latin and English with the monks and the nuns serenading the day:

Psalms 8

1 LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name
in all the earth!
You have set Your glory
in the heavens.

2 Through the praise of
children and infants
You have established
a stronghold against Your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

3 When I consider Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which You have set in place,
4 what is mankind
that You are mindful of them,
human beings that You care for them?

5 You have made them
a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.

6 You made them rulers
over the works of Your hands;
You put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

9 LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name
in all the earth!

Soapstone Trail near St. Mary's Monastery & St. Scholastica's Priory in Petersham, MA

The joy in Psalm 8 is not only present in its ancient and fresh praises throughout, but it also stirred in me the right response to the gorgeous view we got to see as a community of retreatants together after a steep hike later that day.

And the joy in the moment of Terce that also brought a smile to my face was personal because less than 24 hours earlier I was discussing this exact Psalm with my oldest daughter as we considered some of the psalms her and her boyfriend had been reading (1-11 as of last week). We watched the Bible Project video on Psalm 8 and enjoyed a quiet break after school together in the month of May-hem.

The next morning of Terce, I was awakened to joy again during a cool, calming, and serene rainfall with this Psalm:

Psalms 16

1 Preserve me, God,
I take refuge in You.

2 I say to the LORD: 
"You are my God.

My happiness lies
in You alone."

3 He has put into my heart

a marvelous love

for the faithful ones 

who dwell in His land.

4 Those who choose other gods

increase their sorrows.

Never will I offer 

their offerings of blood.
Never will I take their name

upon my lips.

5 O LORD, it is You

who are my portion and cup;

it is You Yourself
who are my prize.

6 The lot marked out for me

is my delight:

welcome indeed the heritage

that falls to me!

7 I will bless the LORD

who gives me counsel,

who even at night directs my heart.

8 I keep the LORD ever in my sight:

since He is at my right hand,

I shall stand firm.

9 And so my heart rejoices,

my soul is glad;

even my body shall rest in safety.

10 For you will not leave 

my soul among the dead,

nor let Your beloved know decay.

11 You will show me the path of life,

the fullness of joy in Your presence,

at Your right hand happiness forever.

St. Mary's Monastery & St. Scholastica's Priory Sanctuary

Multiple people on the retreat mentioned how Psalm 16 had been special for them, too, during this hour of Terce. This time was not only good for my spirit with the Spirit, but good for many others during this hour when the Spirit came down at Pentecost. And while verse 11 had been one I have returned to again and again, I'm now looking forward to returning to the entire Psalm during 2024 to ask the Spirit to move in this way among my family and among Emmaus City Church so that we all can sing as part of Christ's body in Worcester:

8 I keep the LORD ever in my sight:

since He is at my right hand,

I shall stand firm.

9 And so my heart rejoices,

my soul is glad;

even my body shall rest in safety. ...

11 You will show me the path of life,

the fullness of joy in Your presence,

at Your right hand happiness forever.

St. Mary's & St. Scholastica's Retreat 2024 Participants

St. Mary's Retreat Reflections:

The guest house was great
and the chapel so beautiful and welcoming.
The diverse people reflected the Body of Christ
and through the readings, sharing,
praying, eating, and singing —
the Spirit quickly knit us together.
+ Brian M.

It really helped me return
to a grounding perspective
during a particularly busy season ...
When life gets worked up into a frenzy,
it was a great gift of God
to come back to a space
where I can remember that
things won't fall apart without me.
+ Kate K.

I want to do this again because
my soul often needs
this type of refreshment.
Many other “retreats”
offer a time away
but don’t refresh the soul. But
this retreat at St. Mary’s
was a huge refreshment.
+ Nate B.

The best way I can describe it
is like an oasis in a journey
across a desert land.
The pace of life as a parent,
ministry leader, and community activist
can feel overwhelming at times,
and the avalanche of the daily grind is real.
This retreat provides a respite
for a weary soul
or an opportunity to be more attentive
to God's omnipresence and the love of Jesus.
+ Ron W.

Go into it expecting rest
but getting so much more.
+ Marty H.

It was so refreshing and restful
for my body, mind, and soul!
It reoriented me to a place
of centeredness with God
and enabled me to feel renewed
in my calling and empowered to go back
to the fullness of life
with a sense of calm, focus, and joy.
I really appreciated the good mix
of solitude and fellowship
and the ways other participants' journeys
were an encouragement to mine.

+ Katie W.

I liked the whole thing.

+ Aaron K.

Bonus Video:

+ How to Stop Getting Distracted

Bonus Benedictine Stories:

+ The Monks of St. Joseph's (MA)

+ Trappist Cistercian Monks
of Abbey of the Genesee (NY)

More Abbey Awe Posts:  

+ Awakening to New Wonder in Vigils

+ Finding God in a Thin Place

+ God Moves Thru Unlikely Saints  

+ Facing Death w/ "Of Gods & Men"   

Next Post:

+ It Is Solved by Walking

With presence and peace in Christ,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

CN | Open & Unafraid Psalms in Which No Secrets Are Hidden

 

Psalm 126 by Anna Armstrong for Park Church, Denver

The psalms invite us to risk the love of God and neighbor and of the world that surrounds us with the reassurance that we do not venture this risk alone. We venture it together with an extraordinary company of fellow pilgrims across the ages. We would dare to tell our secrets to the community of God because we are confident, or, at the very least, we hold on to some shred of faith, that the steadfast love of God stands behind and before us, above and below us. + W. David O. Taylor, Open and Unafraid

This year I got to take a step of faith and obedience to orchestrate and facilitate a retreat in central Massachusetts for servant leaders across various Christian faith traditions. Sisters and brothers from Pentecostal, Baptist, Charismatic, Congregational, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Reformed backgrounds joined together at St. Mary's Monastery and St. Scholastica's Priory in Petersham, Massachusetts to soak in some silence and solitude, readings, Psalms, Benedictine hours, prayers, and whatever God had in store for each of us, as well as all of us together. As I have experienced some "Abbey Awe" with God in previous retreats, I was praying that each of the participants would experience some of the same in their own way during this special time.

In preparation for our time together in this space, I recommended three books for each person to choose one from to read before the retreat:

+ David Taylor's Open & Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life
+ Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence, and
+ Tracy Balzer's Thin Places: A Journey into Celtic Christianity.

Excerpts we read during the retreat from The Attentive Life can be found in the post, Lanterns, Fireworks & Stars: "Only One Thing Is Needed", as well as at the end of the post, In the Holy Wild with the Lion Who Offers Us the Stream (see the story about the Masai Chief).

This post captures a reading from Open & Unafraid about the Psalms, all 150 of which are sung and prayed throughout one week at St. Mary's and St. Scholastica's as part of their Benedictine tradition in praying the seven hours each day. (Check out one Protestant church's incredible Christ in the Psalms Artwork along with recent books, Sheltering Mercy: Psalms 1-75 and Endless Grace: Psalms 76-150, for why the psalms are essential across various Christian faith traditions, too.) As to why praying through all the Psalms each week has been a centuries-old steadfast tradition of Benedictine monks and nuns, this excerpt from Taylor's work provides a glimpse.

Read the psalms, one after the other, and find yourself at home with God, from whom no secrets are hidden; each of us is standing alongside saints and sinners, walking with both the faithful and the faithless, open and unafraid, because we all have been marked by the steadfast love of God.  

+ David Taylor's Open & Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life

The psalms illuminate the mind for the purpose of enkindling the soul, indeed to put it to fire. It may need be said that the purpose of the Psalms is to turn the soul into a sort of burning bush. 

+ Stanley Jaki

 

We Would Dare to Let the Psalms Teach Us How to Pray

We trust that in the Psalms, we discover that Jesus Himself, the One who knows every grief and every joy of the human heart, both enables and embodies our own prayers.

In reading the poetry of the psalms, we would discover that it is through these musical, metaphor-rich words, which force us to slow down and pay attention, that we encounter God as both intimately familiar and strangely mysterious. 

In singing the psalms, we would discover that we are not alone. We are not the first to feel the sadness of loss, the anger of injustice, the confusion and disorientation of doubt, or the I'm-so-happy-I-could-pop joy of rescue and redemption. We would discover, likewise, a way for all things to be told in community, both those things that we would gladly announce from the hilltops and those things that we might prefer to keep secret, so that God might heal us and lead us "in the way everlasting" (Ps. 139:24). 

In praying the psalms, we would recognize the voice of others, in different circumstances than ours, perhaps, who cry out to God, "How long?" Here we would find permission to lay open before God our griefs and infirmities, which we might be ashamed to confess before others. 

We would find a way to pray angry prayers without being overcome by our anger, and how to curse in context, how to hate without sinning, how to cuss without cussing at all the damnably awful things that mark our broken world. 

We would also find a powerful desire to join the trees and the mountains in their shouts for joy. Like the birds of the air, we, too, would make merry; we, too, would clap our hands with the rivers. Like all of creation, we, too, would yearn with painful hope for the sweet fullness of joy to be made manifest. 

With a freedom that we never suspected was ours, we would choose to believe the words of the Psalter, which enjoin us to name our enemies and to expose them and to rebuke them and, in Jesus' name, to love them and to release them and to serve them. 

We would choose to do justice. We would not simply bemoan the tragic losses or the ungodly acts of injustice. We would also stand up for the poor, the needy, the widowed, the orphaned, the vulnerable, the alien, the stranger, and all who are oppressed—and bring them all before God in prayer, asking Him, in mercy, to be a Just Judge who makes all things right. 

We would pray these things with open eyes. We would pray these things knowing that many of our prayers might never be fulfilled in our lifetime, and that death, like a monstrously terrifying force, confronts us daily with our mortality, reminding us that we are but dust. And yet we would also pray that, though we may be like grass that withers, God would make us to be a life-giving tree, deeply rooted in the "fountain of life," in the God who is the Author of life that is truly life. 

We would pray and sing and read and recite and meditate on all these words of the psalms, but never as a purely solitary act. We would pray them with peoples from every tongue, tribe, and nation. We would pray them with the company of the faithful from every time in history and from all the cultures of the earth. And along with all sorts of peoples, in all kinds of circumstances, we would join the praise of creation—the praise of angels and archangels, of morning stars and fathomless ocean depths, of sea dragons and herds of cattle, of fire and hail, of apple orchards and cedar forests, of "robust men and women in their prime, and yes, graybeards and little children" (Ps. 148 THE MESSAGE). We would join creation's inarticulate praise, and we would offer up our own articulate praise of God, the Creator and Re-Creator of all things. How long would we join creation's praise? As the psalms see it, as long as we live and breathe and have our being, and as long as God lives, which is forever and ever, world without end. 

The Psalter opens with echoes of Genesis and it closes with a symphony of cosmic praise. In William Brown's words, "Psalm 1 begins the pilgrimage and anticipates the destination." To see the psalms in this way is to see ourselves on "the way." We do not, of course, walk this way alone. We walk alongside others who seek to remain faithful to God. 

We walk through these one hundred and fifty poems, Christ's own prayer book, in the hope that we will perceive the shape of faithful prayer, faithful witness, faithful living, faithful friendship, and faithful work. We walk this way, ultimately, with Jesus, for whom these psalms are his heart song. And like Jesus, we read and sing, and pray the psalms along "the way" out of love. 

The gospel of John tells us that Jesus does everything so the world will know that He loves His Father (John 14:31), who in turn loves the Son (John 15:9), and whose Spirit makes the love of God ours as well (Rom. 5:5). This being true, then, Jesus also prays the psalms for love's sake.  

 

"JESUS" BY BAS UTERWIJK | POST PHOTOGRAPHY
 

With Jesus and in Jesus' name, we, too, would pray the psalms, trusting that they will open up a space in our hearts to give and to receive the steadfast love of God, from whom no secrets are hidden. We, too, would pray with the psalmist that God's steadfast love will meet us in our hour of need (Ps. 59:10). We, too, would pray, "I love you, O LORD" (Ps. 18:1), with whatever faith we could muster. And we, too, would pray the words of Psalm 31:23-24 in the hearing of all creation: 

Love GOD, all your saints; 

GOD takes care of all who stay close to Him, 

But He pays back in full 

those arrogant enough to go it alone. 

Be brave. Be strong. Don't give up. 

Expect GOD to get here soon. 

(THE MESSAGE)

+ Excerpt above from the Conclusion of David Taylor's Open & Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life, pgs. 188-191

Next post: Be Still and Know That I Am God Prayer Practice

Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:

Seeds of Hope in the Rain & the Dark; Wrestling with God in Doubt; Baptism as the Way of Life; Being with God; Listening Closely & Paying Attention; Living and Loving Curiously with Wonder; Waiting is the Womb; In the Holy Wild with the Lion Who Offers Us the Stream; Yeshua; An Unexpected Story of Discovering Jesus; Only One Thing Is Needed

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us