Five Minute Friday :: Benefits

• Five Minute Friday :: Benefit Linkup

I've been in contexts where asking people if they receive benefits or bennies (not the drug) is common. Bene, benefits are about goodness, wellness, getting the good stuff and benefiting from it. Doing well by getting the goods.

Like EBT-Food Stamps, some unearned benefits are an essential, life-giving grace.

The Godspell version of Psalm 103 pretty much comes from hymn 293 in the Episcopal Church's Hymnal 1940 and celebrates a long list of benefits God gives us:

Oh bless the Lord my soul
His grace to thee proclaimed
And all that is within me join
To bless his holy name

Oh bless the Lord my soul
God's mercies bear in mind
Forget not all his benefits
The Lord to thee is kind

Oh bless the lord my soul!
He pardons all thy sins
Prolongs thy feeble breath
He heals thine infirmities
And ransoms thee from death

God clothes thee with his love
Upholds thee with his truth
And like an eagle he renews
The vigor of thy youth

And bless God's holy name
Whose grace hath made thee whole
Whose love and kindness crowns
Thy days

Oh bless the lord
Bless the lord, bless the lord
My soul!

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Five Minute Friday :: Sustain

• Five Minute Friday :: Sustain Linkup

What has sustained me all these bleak years?

Getting out of bed a half hour before first light and watching another new day gracefully make its way onto the world. Trying to relocate myself in better illuminated settings from my past. Can I replicate some form of those here and now? Admitting I've still been hitting a few balls out of the park over these many seasons. Despite everything.

Re-membering: bringing back together; again forming a whole from scattered parts. Dreaming. Can the future be an updated version of those parts when they still were whole, before they cracked and scattered?

This is earthquake country. Before I visited the new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA last Tuesday, I read about the project. Probably related to moment skyscraper and high rise construction that bends in an earthquake or a storm so it doesn't crack and break, the entire new museum wing can bend and extend five feet.

I may have mentioned a friend's comment that a mutual acquaintance is "very establishment," without adding a negative or a positive interpretation. They simply are. I'm still "very Y2K." That means I've experienced 911, the Great Recession that my economics degree insists qualified as another Great Depression, the Covid pandemic, the January 6 insurrection, and a long series of shipwrecks and disappointments in my own life. Along with the rest of my population cohort, I've survived global and individual assaults, so a return of anything Y2K-ish will present itself differently from the original.

Have I learned to bend in the storms and earthquakes? Yes. More by necessity than by intention. Have I cracked and broken? Or have I bent?

At my church in Previous City, during the offerings of bread, wine, and tithes, as they set the Eucharistic Table we'd sing from Psalm 116:

What shall I render to the Lord
for all his benefits to me?
I will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving
and will call on the name of the Lord.
I will take the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord
now in the presence of all his people,
in the courts of the Lord's house,
in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.

God invites everyone to the feast! "Jesus Christ, the bread of life; Jesus Christ, the cup of salvation!"

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Five Minute Friday :: Turkey

Your wonders awe those who live
at earth's farthest bounds; you
make the gateways of the morning
and the evening shout for joy!
Psalm 65:8
• Five Minute Friday :: Turkey Linkup at Andrew's Place

Writing on Friday

Andrew's hosting FMF auspiciously has led to an epicurean – or is that an edible? – trio of coffee, chocolate, and now turkey. Turkey because the prompt went live on Thanksgiving evening, or for another reason? I'll take the reason that I love to write about food; I love gifts of food; I love to enjoy food. Food is my love language.

Like my late uncle, I'm [almost] everyone's BFF. I don't think it's genetic, but I believe some people are wired that way. That introduces my saying yesterday I again ventured out to the Santa Monica Church where I had Thanksgiving dinner last year and in 2021. For 2025 I went with a couple of housemates from the hostel where I'm staying and managing; a third joined us at the venue. Although it's an annual community dinner, it's on the small side. Best guess is we had 50 guests, which borders on intimacy for this kind of gathering.

Isn't sharing a meal or a snack a leveling experience? I leveled with the people I've been living with, those Santa Monica church peeps I already was acquainted with, neighborhood people who were first timers at that church and first timers with me. We had food for the table. We made room at the table. When there's room at the table we can call each other friends. All those people I leveled with now are [at least my] BFF.

When food and friends come together, that's a love feast. Food is my love language. And yesterday included turkey.

Do you have a turkey commentary or any comments about turkey?

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Five Minute Friday :: Real

Trust in God at all times, O people
Pour out your heart before God
God is a refuge for us
Selah
Psalm 62:8
• Five Minute Friday :: Real Linkup

• The real and the ideal.

• Real or fake?

• Reality or fantasy?

Our host Kate told us she hesitated last week before writing her post because it was a sensitive topic that easily could have been a trigger.

This week she asked but why not be real, with the example of women – and others – usually replying "I'm fine" "doing okay, thanks" and similar when someone asks about your well-being. We don't want to burden anyone, but why not say, "I'm going through a terrible time, please remember me in your prayers." Why not??

We often compare our troubles and challenges with what we've observed of others, with some we've only read about. We even compare our here and now with what we've been through in the past, and because we've come this far by faith, why complain? Why complain, but better yet, why not be real and honest?

Why not be real and honest because the psalmists were real. Moses was real. The prophets were real. Jesus' disciples were real. Jesus of Nazareth was as real as they come—and he really was God!

All of them approached the throne of grace with complaints, outrage, laments, accusations, grief, pleading, pleas, and "please." Do we not trust God enough, do we not trust the Spirit that indwells God's people enough? Why do we edit and sanitize our communications? Why don't we dare be real?

In a previous life I worked in an affluent community where too many seemed to try their best to appear other than what they really(!) were, to chase expensive designer fashion and home decorating trends, to drive high end vehicles, to send their kids to elite schools and summer camps, etc.There was a tremendous concentration of wealth in that part of town; you might say those blessed with generational wealth "came by it honestly" while for many others it never was really real but they tried for a particular appearance that could fake someone out if that other someone didn't know.

One of the proudest moments of my life happened when a casual friend from that place said to me, "You were so real when you interviewed. I was astonished you got the job!" What a compliment!

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Five Minute Friday :: Pursue

As the mountains surround Jerusalem
so the Lord surrounds his people
from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 125:2

• Five Minute Friday :: Pursue Linkup

Whether it's family, career, comfort, or a longed for yet unknown future, we humans all have our pursuits; at times it feels as if pursuing that goal or dream vacation consumes us. But a full and healthy life mostly is about being with the God who pursues us. The God who chooses us as temples, as a dwelling place, as a place to be at home. And what is homecoming? What is home?

When you love someone you want to be with them. You want to converse with them. You want them to be there for you; you want to be there for them and with them forever. God pursues us now and to the end in order to be with us; so we will be there with God.

In baptism we receive the gift of God's Holy Spirit so that everywhere we go, God is with us, and we will be the presence of Jesus Christ—the presence of God. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 the Apostle Paul reminds us, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" Later in 1 Corinthians 6:19 he tells us, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?" That's the essence God's presence now assumes: embodied in a human person, in each of us, just as God became embodied, enfleshed, incarnate in Jesus Christ.

What a gift and what a challenge for God to pursue us and trust us during these turbulent times!

In Alfred Fedak's anthem A Song of Paul, John Bell paraphrases 1 Corinthians 13:10 ("when the perfect comes, the incomplete will disappear") "Love expects tomorrow." In Jesus' death and resurrection, God gifts us with all the tomorrows we can imagine. We live in the here and now and in the not yet, but as God keeps pursuing us, our lives will be complete. Endlessly. Forever. Eternally. God at home with us. Our homecoming with God.

The psalmist sings:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
Psalm 90:1-2
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Season of Creation 4 :: Mountain

Season of Creation 4 :: Mountain

God's holy mountain
is the joy of all the earth.
Psalm 48:1-2
Intro

For about a decade I designed for the liturgical Season of Creation emphasis every year. Between "life stuff" and a general move away from the three year series related to the Revised Common Lectionary, I didn't design anything new for the past couple of years. However, many pastors and churches still prefer the year A – Spirit; Year B – Word; Year C – Wisdom series. They make much more creative and interpretive sense than trying to dig out connections from the appointed RCL readings.

Not only due to Covid that exacerbated everything that wasn't going well for everyone, my days have been too unsettled for reasonably good overall health, yet I still was smart enough to remember no one does anything truly original because everything is inspired and derivative. Over the decades I've recycled, reworked, re-appropriated, and redone a lot of my own art and writing. Besides, given that some of my Season of Creation designs have been some of my forty or fifty favorites, why not do another Act II? I've based this year's banners on Year B from 2018.

Fonts used:

• Big Truck – Sunday name
• Betsystype – scripture verse
• Keener – season of creation calendar year
• Chelsea Studio – series name

Season of Creation 3 :: Sky

Season of Creation 3 :: Sky

The heavens declare
the glory of God
and the firmament
sheweth God's handiwork.
Psalm 19:1
Intro

For about a decade I designed for the liturgical Season of Creation emphasis every year. Between "life stuff" and a general move away from the three year series related to the Revised Common Lectionary, I didn't design anything new for the past couple of years. However, many pastors and churches still prefer the year A – Spirit; Year B – Word; Year C – Wisdom series. They make much more creative and interpretive sense than trying to dig out connections from the appointed RCL readings.

Not only due to Covid that exacerbated everything that wasn't going well for everyone, my days have been too unsettled for reasonably good overall health, yet I still was smart enough to remember no one does anything truly original because everything is inspired and derivative. Over the decades I've recycled, reworked, re-appropriated, and redone a lot of my own art and writing. Besides, given that some of my Season of Creation designs have been some of my forty or fifty favorites, why not do another Act II? I've based this year's banners on Year B from 2018.

Fonts used:

• Big Truck – Sunday name
• Betsystype – scripture verse
• Keener – season of creation calendar year
• Chelsea Studio – series name

Season of Creation 2 :: Humanity

Season of Creation 2 :: Humanity

You have made them
a little lower than God
and crowned humanity
with glory and honour.
Psalm 8:5
Intro

For about a decade I designed for the liturgical Season of Creation emphasis every year. Between "life stuff" and a general move away from the three year series related to the Revised Common Lectionary, I didn't design anything new for the past couple of years. However, many pastors and churches still prefer the year A – Spirit; Year B – Word; Year C – Wisdom series. They make much more creative and interpretive sense than trying to dig out connections from the appointed RCL readings.

Not only due to Covid that exacerbated everything that wasn't going well for everyone, my days have been too unsettled for reasonably good overall health, yet I still was smart enough to remember no one does anything truly original because everything is inspired and derivative. Over the decades I've recycled, reworked, re-appropriated, and redone a lot of my own art and writing. Besides, given that some of my Season of Creation designs have been some of my forty or fifty favorites, why not do another Act II? I've based this year's banners on Year B from 2018.

Fonts used:

• Big Truck – Sunday name
• Betsystype – scripture verse
• Keener – season of creation calendar year
• Chelsea Studio – series name

All Saints 2021

"The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof;
the world and those that dwell therein." Psalm 24:1

Five Minute Friday :: Prayer

My God in his steadfast love will meet me. Psalm 59:10

• FMF Prayer Linkup

Prayer! That activity of heart, mind, and body that helps connect us to God. Prayer—it comes in varieties of praise, thanksgiving, petition, lament, celebration, solicitation, questioning why. When we pray and imagine we're alone, we're not really. As the apostle Paul points out, God's Spirit of Life within us shapes our prayer because as a supposedly solitary individual we don't know what to say. Then there are times we pray as we gather in the assembly of saints: prayers of the people bring the world's concerns before God's throne of grace; eucharistic prayer reconnects us to God's people and God's actions in every place and time and even carries us together into God's future.

But if I could continue a short five minutes about prayer, it would start with the Psalter. The Psalms were the Prayer Book of the Synagogue. The Psalms were the Hymn Book of John Calvin's Geneva Reform. Every single denominational and free church hymnal today includes dozens of hymns based on psalms. The psalms themselves express every possible human emotion, which makes them perfect examples of prayer. Psalms were composed to be sung in corporate worship and to be used in the prayer that's never private because the Holy Spirit always abides with us and within us.

Do you have a favorite psalm?
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Reformation Day 2021

#Reformation #ReformationDay #Reformation2021 #Reformation504

#Psalm46 Be Still and Know that I Am God • God is in the midst of the city

• Reformation Day 2021 on my Lectionary Project •

Winter & February 2019

• Meteorological winter is over for the northern hemisphere; Porch Stories host Kristin writes about her full...

• Stories from the Porch in February

• Just as at the conclusion of every season, I'm linking to Emily P. Freeman's quarterly reflection.

• With spring on the way, this blog post doubles as a winter summary:

• here's December 2018;

• and January 2019.

• I'm still doing my best to deal with more unexpected disappointment along with envisioning future possibilities; part of dealing means finding interesting activities.

• LA Metro has been holding a series of Transit Workshops around town; I enjoyed the one in nearby Inglewood City Hall, and also appreciated a tasty free meal.

• Santa Monica Church in Santa Monica, The Vital Worship Grants Program of the Calvin Institute of Worship, and the Lilly Endowment has been sponsoring Honest to God: Encountering the Psalms.

ª On the third Saturday of February, I had an amazing opportunity to be Ecumenical and Reformed with the Geneva Psalter and its metrical descendants with ultra-renowned John Witvliet from Calvin College and Seminary. Participants even received a copy of Psalms for All Seasons, with several musical settings of each psalm.

• Another stellar presenter, Paul Ford, told us more about Psalms and the Lectionary that I'd previously known on February's fourth Saturday.

• On Oscars night (here in LA, yay!) a couple dozen of us watched Occupation 101 at the judicatory offices and received a Live Generously Thrivent t-shirt—what a great color! We savored a yummy middle eastern dinner, as well.

Porch Story :: Green Team Talk

Porch Stories host Kristin's younger daughter Rachel is three years old! Happy Birthday, Rachel!

Intro

September and October typically are our hottest months in southern California. Two more days until Saturday and the autumnal equinox. Water year begins 01 October, the rainfall year—01 July; both are at historic southern California lows. Meanwhile, Florence has sent floods, devastation, and grief along the Eastern seaboard and she's become another hurricane name that will be retired forever. Today, September 20^th, I'm finally blogging my Green Team talk from May 18^th, Friday of Easter 7, the 48^th day of Easter, two days before the Festival of Pentecost. Although I kept my six pages of notes, I'm reconstructing what I said from my single page outline.

Green Team Talk

Today is the forty-eighth day of Easter!
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
response: Christ is risen indeed; Alleluia!

Today is the forty-eighth day of Easter! In a couple of days the church's year of grace will cycle into the green and growing liturgical season of Pentecost, and we'll begin counting Sundays after Pentecost. Even Trinity Sunday can be called the first Sunday after Pentecost, or the octave of Pentecost. The church long has celebrated important events in octaves of eight days...

During this season of the Spirit, time of the Church, we act upon and celebrate the reality of the Holy Spirit of life, the Spirit of resurrection from the dead that fills all creation and that we specifically receive as a gift of our baptism.

A month after the Day of Pentecost, the wheel of the year will welcome another summer solstice; summer's unfolding parallels the early part of the Sundays after Pentecost. Long ago the band Spirit sang, "I've Got a Line on You" because "the summer, she's coming on strong." Spirit! Just listen to that name! During the great fifty days of Easter, the lectionary gospel texts have showed us quite a few misunderstandings of Jesus' call to serve, and by extension, confusion regarding our baptismal call to life as God's servant people in Christ Jesus.

I love reminding my adult Sunday School class Romans 8 reminds us all creation waits for us to be revealed {to all creation} as true offspring of God, as people who authentically reflect and embody God's image as careful stewards of all the earth, all creation just as Jesus would. In fact, that passage is the appointed second reading or epistle for Trinity Sunday in this lectionary year B:

Romans 8

¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God...
²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

I love reminding my class when we claim our divine image in the Spirit, creation itself will be set free from death and decay and enjoy the same bounded freedom we humans do as God's presence on earth. I frequently point out the same Spanish word – esperar, espero, and cognates – means hope, wait, and expect.

The days and the nights of summer convey a sense of lush, full, completeness. Spring's yellow-green has turned richer and darker; seeds have displayed their once-hidden promise in fruits, veggies, berries, and blooms.

The late James Agee {A Death in the Family; Knoxville, Summer of 1915} wrote about summer with a poem later set to music for a solo vocalist by Samuel Barber, for mixed choir by Morten Lauridsen:

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.

I've been enjoying the PCUSA's Daily Office app that follows a 2-year, standalone {not related to the Revised Standard Lectionary} daily lectionary. This morning's psalms were 96 and 148; both psalms are appointed for all the Christmas/Nativity liturgies in all three lectionary years!!! Psalm 96 charges humans and "all the earth" to sing a new song to the Lord, with happy skies, singing trees, rejoicing prairies, roaring waters. Psalm 148 demands sun, moon, stars, mountains, fruit trees, cedars—and people, too praise the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer God.

During this season of the Spirit, time of the Church, we act upon and celebrate the reality of the Holy Spirit of life, the Spirit of resurrection from the dead that fills all creation and that we specifically receive as a gift of our baptism.

This denomination emphasizes God's Work, Our Hands. Does everyone have a chrome orange slogan t-shirt? {I have two: one from one of my churches in Previous City, one from my church in Current City.} In the SS class I facilitate, we've talked a lot about neighborology—the word about the neighbor. Especially during these great fifty days of Easter, particularly in John's gospel and Luke's Acts of the Apostles we've considered the shape, form, and function of the servant church God calls and enables us to be. Now we're moving into another Season of the Spirit, Time of the Church.

Now we're moving into another Season of the Spirit, Time of the Church. God's promises in the Spirit through Paul of Tarsus' letter to the church at Rome, the psalmist's word imagery of creation fully alive look exactly like the realization of God's work done by our hands, voices, hearts, and feet. Like the band Spirit, in the power of the Spirit of Life, we've got a line on all creation.

Amen? Amen!

Outro

This typescript of my page of sparse notes probably is close to what I actually said four months ago; like most people, I tend to say the same things over and over. When I assembled this talk, summer with its long, sun-filled days officially was four weeks on the horizon, only ten days out in the popular sense. As I blog on this September Thursday evening, late summer's shadows, shortening daylight, and a settled sense of completeness rivals James Agee's whole hearts of earth in the grasp of high summer.

Recently admitting I'm doing less with my gifts and education, participating less in church and world, even earning less in my design endeavor than during my last bleak year in Previous City has made me weary and thoughtful. Like someone in a small town with declining population and departing industry, I relocated north to Current City because I'd mined all possible opps where I was. Like Mary Chapin Carpenter's sibling in "Only A Dream," I departed Previous City leaving no sign of someone who expects to be back, though I left the bed in the old condo, gave the desk to the son of a good friend.

Please tell me all this was only a dream and I'll wake up to something new?

Five Minute Friday: Blessing

Time for another Five Minute Friday—whazzup this week? Host Kate Motaung counsels us Count Your Blessings. Her button image for the prompt simply says blessing, so that's another option.


This week my header is a version of my Earth Day 2013 design; to quote my blog, "from the deuteronomic historian we constantly hear the refrain, 'into the land, into the land, into the land...' Deuteronomy 28:1-3 cautions and promises:

"Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country."

take five {minutes}

God's promises carry the condition of obedience; the witness of scripture shows us "grace is not all that free." Grace not all that free? But obedience is bounded freedom! Yet in the course of a year – a year?! in any week or every day – we experience countless unanticipated, completely unimagined, humanly impossible surprises of grace-filled blessing. The Deuteronomy text describes blessings even overtaking us wherever we are, everywhere we go, as God responds to our obedience! Sounds like a most welcome heavenly deluge! You know what else? The psalm writers remind us to "Bless the Lord!" Send grace and charity, praise and doxology from earth to heaven! When that happens it's our response to God's gifts; how delighted God must be that we remember, that we do our best to reciprocate.

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Five Minute Friday: Sing

Kate Motaung's our FMF again this time; as days in the northern hemisphere get longer, what better FMF prompt could we have than sing? As days in the southern hemisphere grow shorter, "sing" also is the perfect prompt!

Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the LORD, to the rock of Israel. Isaiah 30:29

Particularly the psalms and the books of Isaiah in the scriptures bring us a literal plethora of instances of God's people and all God's creation responding in song to God's grace and providence! I especially love that psalms 96. 98, and 148 the lectionary appoints for Christmas – Nativity, the sanctified solemnity of God's incarnation in a body made from earthly elements – feature singing hills, mountains, rivers, and streams. In the passage that eventually became chapter 30, we receive God's promise of a song for us through Isaiah of Jerusalem who had more than an inkling another threat from the north soon would overtake Israel. This is not random incidental singing, but voices that well up and sing from inner joy – "gladness of heart" – so immense it requires accompaniment by flutes, horns, wind instruments that magnify and glorify the breath of the divine in each of us. For sure Mountain of the Lord refers to Mount Zion and the Jerusalem temple, but this kind of exuberance is the shalom, the fullness, and completeness we experience in the presence of God whenever God's people assemble. Isaiah's words may refer to a passover celebration, possibly to any encounter with God in the Jerusalem temple...

...less than a week ago the church celebrated Easter, the festival of the holy solemnity of the resurrection of our Lord. Just as passover observes Israel's exodus from Egypt and trek out of bondage and slavery, easter's the freedom feast of the new covenant children of God. We call the week after easter Bright Week and celebrate it as the eighth day / the first day of the new creation. What a reason to sing! Sing hallelujah as we did last Sunday in church with brass quintet? Amen! Amen!

# # # Postscript: Some versions of Isaiah 30:29 add "the rock that shelters Israel" to the end of the verse. My header image is my interpretation of a psalm verse that also refers God's shelter and protection that lead to joy-filled song. In the end I didn't write about it at all, but the singing colors, energy and optimism fit this prompt to perfection.

Porch Stories: Prayer

Last week Kristin Hill Taylor's weekly Wednesday linkup changed from Three Word Wednesday into Porch Stories; today Kristin writes about Putting my Prayers in a Box.

When Kristin told me today's topic was prayer, I immediately thought of it as a good topic for the slowed-down days of Lent. I also realized all of us need to evaluate and reorient our prayer lives on a regular basis. People insist we become closest to those we talk to most often. Talk to about what? Most of us reserve certain topics for certain people, but with God, we need to be sure nothing's off limits. In her Mudhouse Sabbath, Lauren Winner reminds us Jewish prayer is liturgical prayer, meaning actions, words, postures, and attitudes that belong to the entire community, not simply to a single individual. She suggests beginning our daily prayer time(s) with written prayers rather than with free prayer that's the longing of our own hearts.

What written prayers would I suggest? Why not start each prayer time with a psalm? Close with a psalm, as well? In our necessary quest to be sure nothing between us and God is off-limits, the full range of the psalter provides expressive depth to every aspect of "Our Human Condition," and afterwards we can bring our own situations, consternations, hopes, and troubles before the throne of grace. We can pray the liturgy of the hours with the church in every time and every place, but apart from a retreat or vacation setting, praying all the canonical hours every day likely won't happen. Why not greet the new day with an abbreviated version of Matins and/or pray Compline as a family, as a couple, or alone on your balcony or veranda after your evening meal or before bed? When Jesus' disciples asked him how to pray, he responded with "Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name..." You know the rest! Talk about praying with the rest of the church! Just as we bring our own voices to God in prayer, God's Holy Spirit has inspired people who developed the structure and words of the divine office (and the Eucharistic liturgy) to combine and integrate God's address to us humans with our responses to God's initiative.

I've never gotten into praying scripture through the practice of Lectio divina, but it's still easy to claim for ourselves a few verses from almost any portion of scripture. There are daily devotional booklets that offer very short reflections on short passages; you also could begin your serious devotional time with the standalone two-year daily lectionary on PC(USA)—"standalone" because it doesn't relate at all to the 3-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. Just as we speak to God through our words and actions, with our whole lives, God speaks to each of us as individuals and in gathered community through the words of scripture, best interpreted by Jesus, the Living Word. You also can access the daily lectionary here—this links directly to readings for today, 22 March 2017.

Making scripture as God's word to us and for us a integral part of our prayer that's our word and words from earth to heaven can help us discern what God asks of us, where God wants us to be. As dwellers in the 21^st century and as people God has called and claimed in baptism, we will receive personal, individual revelation—just as the scriptures witness to countless individuals to whom God has revealed Godself and God's intentions. What God asks of us always will be for the greater good, and will align with better or best options for the families and communities we belong to and interact with; God's intentions for any of us ultimately will lead to the well-being and betterment of all creation. We literally can invoke God's words and Jesus Christ's presence in scripture to measure and test what we hear!

There are sitting (standing, walking) in silence types of prayer that provide opportunities to open, bear, and lay bare our hearts and our lives to God in ways speech can't; ways to listen for God's response in ways only sheer silence can transmit, but for this Porch Stories edition I've concentrated on Praying with Spoken – and sometimes our own Written – Words.