Here we are, Loving One, Mystery, Light
Beginning to quiet ourselves
Beginning to be still
Remembering you created us
To flourish in your Love
Remembering an old desire to grow in you
We long to be more than we are living now
We long to live all we can become
But, fearful, wonder how we can
We try to choose the best and truest path
But stumble in our living and in our choosing
We want to handle things ourselves
We’d rather make it on our own
And besides, trusting you, God,
Can be very hard
But we need more Light, your Light,
To see the ways ahead
We need more wisdom, yours, to choose the way that’s well for us
Here we are beginning willingness
Beginning to trust, to open ourselves, our lives, and our decisions
To your illuminating Light
Here we are, Loving One, ready to begin.
Amen.
I love that prayer by Nancy Bieber
Today, one line stands out to me: “We try to choose the best and truest path but stumble in our living and in our choosing.”
I can imagine Philip and Nathaneal praying those words
And, in response, Jesus said to Philip, “Follow me”
And Philip said to Nathaneal, “Come and see”
And each of them chose the best and truest path
Each of us at one time or another has chosen the best and truest path
We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t on that path
So the challenge in our faith isn’t how do I choose the best and truest path
It’s how do I stay on the best and truest path?
In the beginning of the journey, Jesus says to a potential disciple: “Follow Me.”
And Jesus continues to say to us: “Follow Me”
How do we do that? How do we stay on the best and truest path?
I would propose that Jesus says “Follow Me” through what I call “holy nudges.”
Holy nudges are those big and small ways that Jesus says,
“Come, follow me.”
It’s those moments when you feel suddenly compelled to: make a phone call, send a card, knock on a door, pay for someone else’s meal, say a prayer. Holy nudges.
My daughter had a holy nudge one day on her way to work.
As she was driving down a busy four lane street, two lanes in each direction, suddenly she had an urge to pull over. She didn’t know why. As she slowly came to a stop at the side of the road, she saw a two year old toddler walking along in a deep ditch running alongside the road. She scooped her up in her arms and there weren’t any houses nearby, but there was a store. So she carried her to the nearby store where she found her parents, who hadn’t yet noticed she had wandered away.
A holy nudge is also one of those moments when a topic or theme keeps coming up in your mind.
It may come as a sudden insight (I had so many, I filled a red three ring binder with them)
Or it may come in the form of renewed energy – when we suddenly feel a passion and energy about something, and feel a pull to follow through
A holy nudge may come during a time of prayer, worship, or reading scripture, or it may come at a very ordinary time, like when you are making your bed or doing the dishes.
Sooner or later, if we are on the path that Jesus calls us to, we will get a nudge.
In fact, on the journey, we will experience many nudges in our lifetime.
It has to be. This is the way we are trained by the Spirit to follow Jesus.
In some way, Jesus is like a mother eagle as she teaches her young to fly.
In the Sinai, eagle nests are high on the top of the cliffs. At the right time, the mother bird nudges her chicks out of the nest. This causes the chick to free-fall off the cliff. If the eaglet doesn’t discover how to fly, the mother eagle swoops down and catches the young on her wing. She flies around with the chick on her wing to give it the sensation of flying. This is repeated until the young one learns to fly.
The author of Exodus 19:4 has obviously watched this and it inspired the verse in which God reminds the Israelites: “You have seen how I bore you on eagle’s wings.”
Jesus does the same to us, nudges us out of the nest and into ministry, carefully watching over us and bearing us up as we learn
And so if we are seriously on the path, we begin to get, and to listen, and to respond to the holy nudges of Jesus
It takes three distinct attitudes to hear and respond to the nudges:
a. Willingness – the want to-s
b. Attentiveness – paying attention to our thoughts, emotions, our bodies, the people around us, the circumstances in our lives
c. Responsiveness – the decision to respond to the nudge, to act
Every day, every moment, Jesus says to those of us already on the path – Follow Me
That call requires us to be courageous:
a. To allow ourselves to be pushed out of the nest
b. To quiet ourselves enough to hear Jesus
c. To trust that God will be there with us through our failures and our successes
d. To open ourselves to God’s wisdom and illuminating Light
e. To be willing to hear and follow the holy nudges of God
f. To continue to hear Jesus saying Follow Me
Lord, grant us the courage to say, I will follow you wherever you go.