Piloting Faith: Here is our goal for today...

A Word for the Day...

This Sunday congregations around the world will be celebrating "Transfiguration Sunday." It's an admittedly weird story in the Bible where Jesus and the disciples go up a mountain. While Jesus is praying, he starts glowing with this radiant white light. Then Moses and Elijah appear and start talking to him. When they finish, they disappear, but then a big cloud envelops Jesus, and a voice says "This is my Son, with whom I am pleased." The disciples don't know what to think of any of this...so they don't say anything for three days.

That sounds like what I would do...after I changed my pants.

The author of this story, Luke, is trying to tell us that encountering God this way changed Jesus. Jesus was different - transformed into something new - clearer about his sense of purpose and the power of his calling.

It begs the question: What sacred experiences in your life have fundamentally changed you? When have you encountered a sense of the Sacred that left you breathless or in awe? What happened to you next? Did those moments fade into an aging memory or did they set you on a new course?

In conversations I have with people wondering about the meaning of their lives, I find that they are not so much looking for a "reason" as for a "feeling." They - we - all want to feel alive - to feel God. We want to experience the power of life pulsing through our bodies. We want to be transformed, to be made new, to be made whole.

It matters that Jesus had this experience with others - Moses, Elijah and the disciples. Change is disorienting. When we change, we need the ancestors to surround us and our friends to steady us. We are made to walk this journey together.

I pray that you encounter God today in a way that takes your breath away. Don't turn your eyes or walk away. Walk straight into that cloud of grace. Transformation is God's promise to all of us and ultimately the hope of the world.

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

Sacred One,

You sometimes feel so far away. We see death and disaster in the news, and everywhere, people are arguing, always arguing. And yet Jesus said that your domain - the only true and enduring reality - is also among us.

May your presence become real to us in the midst of our despair.

Even in my own heart, I hold grudges, nurse anxieties, withhold compassion, and put myself first. Too often, my heart is not a hospitable place for your Spirit. I resist your presence there, too.

May your presence become real to us in the midst of our despair.

Empower your people to see where your way of life is already showing up. Help us to become passionate agents in this continuing unfolding of your will for all things.

Amen.

(adapted from The Prayer Wheel by Patton Dodd, Jana Riess, and David Van Biema)