Daily Worship

Restless ponds

Lily Cathcart March 08, 2022 0 3
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Romans 10: 8b-13 (NRSVA)

8b ‘The word is near you,
    on your lips and in your heart’

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. 11 The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. 13 For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

My restlessness can often make me long for change. A change of scene, a change of heart, a change of mind. It can also make me long to be different from those around me and even more than that, it can start to make me think that perhaps God is not for me anymore. Perhaps God won’t want me, as changeable as I am, or perhaps God is too stationary for me confined too much to church or the Bible.

Luckily my experience has taught me something else too: God is the one who made me restless.

Maybe God made you restless too?

A little restlessness is good, a lot can even be great. Restlessness stops the world becoming a big stagnant pond. God cannot be confined only to a few steady and stationary souls. Did you know a pond will stagnate without a little movement, some good bacteria and a host of travelling insects and animals. So also does life and faith require a whole host of different souls with varying degrees of restlessness.

We are all needed and wanted by God from the steadiest to the most restless. God made you as you are and longs for you to feel no shame about it, but to embody it. Remember, even though God’s love is forever steadfast, God is restless too.

 

PRAYER:

 

Dear restless God

Teach us not to doubt the souls you have gifted us with

Point us towards the next place in need of fresh air

Help us to seek out new souls to meet and to share you with

Allow us in return to be made fuller by each encounter

Amen

Lent Disciplines

As we think about the wilderness this week, let’s take time every day to contemplate God’s gift of creation with its incredible varieties of habitat. Consider if there’s anything you can do this week to actively care for God’s world.