Week Two - Daily Schedule
Theme: Discovering the delight with which God beholds me.
Grace/Desire: I want to see and know more clearly the deeply personal and faithful care and love of God for me.
Prayer Material for the Week
- Isaiah 43:1-7: You are precious in my eyes.
- Romans 8:31-39: With God on our side who can be against us?
- Prayer of Consideration: "I know You"
- Luke 15:1-32: Three parables about God's merciful love.
- Hosea 11:1-9: When Israel was a child, I loved him.
- Psalm 139: God, you create my inmost self.
- Isaiah 43:1-7 again. You are precious in my eyes.
Considerations for this Week: Summary of Prayer
Prayer for the Week
Oh, Lord my God,
You called me from the sleep of nothingness
merely because in Your tremendous love
You want to make good and beautiful beings.
You have called me by my name in my mother's womb.
You have given me breath and light and movement
and walked with me every moment of my existence.
I am amazed, Lord God of the universe,
that You attend to me and, more, cherish me.
Create in me the faithfulness that moves You,
so that I will trust You and yearn for You all my days.
Amen
This simple exercise depends on notes, memory, and lively thinking.
- Here are some likenesses: Two friends have been going over the picture album of a two-week vacation together when they ask each other how many different places they had seen. They flip back through the pictures swiftly, recalling this town and that mountain, noting where they stopped. A summary of former prayer is like that.
- Another likeness: The chairperson of a little volunteer organization wonders, while preparing for the next meeting, how many different projects the group has volunteered for during the past six months and what worked and what didn't. The leader quickly flips through notes and minutes, counting and appreciating and valuing, and then prepares what to say to the members. A summary of former prayer is like that.
- A summary is also like a repetition. It differs, though, because the summary takes you back over more than just the black holes and volcanoes. In doing a summary, you peruse whatever has come up in your prayer.
- So I prepare the material well before my time for prayer. I look back over all that I have prayed over during a specified period. I single out intense experiences, sharper convictions, images, and ideas. I note both positive and negative elements.
When I come to pray, I do not spend too long on any single point. I try to figure out what I have gotten at during this period, perhaps seeing more simply and more clearly by moving over all of the matter. From this somewhat determined move through the fruits of earlier prayer, I find things to take to colloquy and petition. So when I am ready (and as soon as I am ready), I make the Triple Colloquy.
I know you. I created you. I am creating you.
I have loved you from your mother's womb.
You have fled - as you now know - from my love.
But I love you nevertheless, and not-the-less,
no matter how far you flee.
It is I who sustain your very power of fleeing,
and I will never finally let you go.
I accept you as you are. You are forgiven.
I know all your sufferings. I have always known them.
For beyond your understanding, when you suffer, I suffer.
I also know all the little tricks
by which you try to hide the ugliness
you have made of your life from yourself and others.
But you are beautiful. You are beautiful
more deeply within than you can see.
You are beautiful because you yourself,
in the unique one that only you are,
reflect already something of the beauty
of my holiness in a way which shall never end.
You are beautiful also because I, and I alone,
see the beauty you shall become.
Through the transforming power of my love
you shall become perfectly beautiful.
You shall become perfectly beautiful
in a uniquely irreplaceable way,
which neither you nor I will work out alone.
For we shall work it out together.
- Charles K. Robinson