NOT QUITE WHAT I EXPECTED...

I arrived home yesterday evenening absolutely exhausted from the this weekend's Walk to Emmaus, but I have to say it was a "good tired" (if you were on the walk you'll appreciate that).

I'm not going to say much about what we actually did during the weekend except that:

1. Despite rumors I've heard in the past Walk to Emmaus is NOT a cult, it is COMMUNITY all the way and it builds community in very special and endearing ways.

2. God is there just like God is always there in our lives, but there really is a spirit about the weekend that invites grace to be much more visible in our lives.

3. Don't go if you aren't ready to have a heart to heart with God.

With that said, I am not the same person that I was on Thursday afternoon. This weekend God's grace became apparent in my life in some ways that I have not experienced so strongly before. In fact I'll be quite honest, I came both face to face with God this weekend and i came face to face with that part of myself that I hide so deep down inside that I don't allow him to surface too often. There are things that in coming home have not returned home with me.

BUT, that is not the end of the story. So when I woke up this morning I realized that I still had some "stuff" that I needed to process and I decided that I needed to get away from the church and the house for this and go somewhere that I consider a sacred space. So I drove up to Gethsemane Abbey and was able to pray the hours of sext and none with the brothers there. Other than that I spent a bit of time in solitude reading and in prayer.

Here were a couple of God moments today:
When I opened my bible to today's lectionary reading it was Joshua 5: 9-12. In that reading the People of Israel, led by Joshua, are coming into the land of Canaan. God tells Joshua that although God has provided manna as food since God's people left Egypt now the people are to eat from the crops of this New Land.

Any other day I probably would have read that and thought, "Rannnndommm". But today as I was sitting in the abbey and read those words God was speaking through that story saying- "This weekend I brought you out of another Egypt (not the first egypt for me, nor the last) and this weekend you had lots of manna. Now that you are home your "eating habits" aren't going to be the same as in Egypt, you are in a different place and I need for you to change your "diet" a bit. Wow!! Affirmation of God's grace all around!!

Second God Moment: I was driving home from Gethsemane and hit one of those monotonous driving zones where eyes get heavy and you aren't sure if you may have dozed off for a split millisecond or not. I'm driving along and my eye keep getting heavy, I keep shifting around in my seat, shaking my head trying to snap out of "the hypnozone" when my tire blew out. I WAS AWAKE THEN!! Not quite how I wanted to end my day especially since I had to wait on the side of the interstate for 3 hours for the wrecker to come that Jen called.

But all in all it was a great grace filled weekend and very good fourth day.

shalom,
stPhransus