Search Results
Open with God Book - House Group
Open with God Book - House Group
by Christine Odell
HOUSE GROUP Prayers for Various Occasions Reading John 16.16-24 Place a large candle where everyone can see it, but light it later. We spend a few moments in silence reminding ourselves that we have come here to learn from God’s word and one another what it means to follow Christ…
Poem: David’s line
Poem: David’s line
by Marjorie Dobson
Poem: David’s line When David tried to make a house for God – a permanent fixture – a settled resting place – God turned the tables on him, promised him a home and land, safe from his enemies for future generations. For God had always wandered with the people; followed and led th…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Most days we use the stairs of our homes without a thought about their possible meaning beyond enabling us to climb. And often we don’t even think about that obvious use. Yet stairs and ladders have always been powerful spiritual images. Humans have forever wanted to transcend th…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Door
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Door
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We enter our dwellings through a door. When the door closes we are within the protection of our home. Yet we do not always want to be enclosed and protected. We also want to let the world in, to crack the door, to set it ajar, to invite that which is new into the trusted and fami…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We don’t seem to pay attention to the floor unless it is missing, unless it has a spill or an obstruction on it. Mostly we are confident that the floor is present and we merrily step upon it. Many things become floor-like to us—certain steady relationships, certain habits, certai…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
To have a roof over our heads is to have a home. Days of storm, days of intense sun, gray days, pleasant days—the roof is there and we are sheltered. How easily we take that fact for granted, yet all around us there is homelessness—a roof-less population. In appreciating that we …
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
If we have been out in the dark, how comforting to see a lighted window; if we have been shut in, how refreshing when the light finds us. Without windows a house is a tomb. We need light and air. We need the new day to enter our homes, to bring us out of the night’s slumber and o…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Many people who meditate sit facing a wall—facing a limit in order to find the limitless inside. Many pilgrims have traveled to stand beside the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or to be witnesses by the walls where the names of the dead are inscribed. We need walls to help us with memo…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Hearth
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Hearth
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Not many homes have an actual hearth, a place for fire to burn freely. Most of us live in apartments or houses without fireplaces. Nevertheless, every dwelling has a subjective center for fire. It is the place where we gather, the place we are warmed. It is no accident that the w…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Dwelling
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Dwelling
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
To dwell is to live in a place, to remain in it. Any space we truly occupy becomes, through dwelling, a home— becomes, through time, a sanctuary. There is, in the word dwell, a sense of repose. When we really inhabit our homes we gain a sense of time, and are then more able to kn…
David’s line