Processing with God: Narrative Lectionary, Liturgy, Prayers
Stealing Time
God, remind me to steal some time.
To look at the clouds
to be bored
to take the scenic route…
Tell me how it is ok if the house is messier than I’d like, that it’s good to claim the smaller victories of keeping everyone fed and (at least starting out) in clean clothes…
Remind me that Jesus stole time all the time!
Napping in the storm, snuggling a fig tree, sneaking off to a lake
When you lead me beside the (sort of) still waters of a small lake beach on a stolen afternoon, help me to embrace the experience.
When the power or internet is out and I’m forced to relax…
If the best I can muster in thought is half written sentences…
When time is given, as a gift, remind me that it isn’t stolen.
Remind me that Holy Spirit herself might be intervening.
Whisper to me that I am beloved. And that my worth is not based upon my productivity.
Image: Your Work is Not Measured by your Productivity
I’ll never forget my first year in full time ministry when there was a snowstorm every single Wednesday of November, forcing me to slowdown.
Sometimes, I need that reminder God.
And if I need to take the longer way to Jerusalem, if I need to mull and mutter and forge out some time to relax before I do the next hard thing, that is okay.
Remind me, God, that you built me, and all humans to be this way.
And that Jesus knew full well that breaks for food, laughter with friends, and time with family are essential to our humanity, and Jesus was indeed fully human.
Rest is essential, Sabbath is commanded, time is precious–let me live these truths in whatever way I can, I pray.
Amen
Image of Tweet Robin Thede: We all need to expect about forty percent less productivity from each other than normal and yet somehow everyone seems to expect one hundred and forty percent right now. Working at Proffitting WAP: Chile, they are thinking because we are working reotely that we do not nothing but time since we are sitting at home. However that push for productive is affecting our mental health because there’s no boundaries to decompress
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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