Upper Room Daily Reflections ~ ”Active Listening” ~ Thursday, 31 October 2013
Today’s Reflections:
THERE IS A KIND of humility in being a good active listener. We consent to say what seems obvious in order to let others know that we really care about what they are saying. When we state in our own words what another has communicated, usually it is received as a powerful affirmation. It may seem that this “repetition” contributes nothing, but in practice it helps the speaker to feel both known and accepted. Good listening immeasurably helps to build dynamic and trusting group relationships and to strengthen individual growth in Christ.
And, of course, careful listening to one another is a way of being attentive to God. In group lectio, we have gathered to hear the Word of God. We hear this word in the scripture, and we listen attentively to help one another hear it in our own lives. Another sensitive listener is the best aid to help us hear the Spirit at work in us, as participants in spiritual direction have known for centuries.~-Norvene Vest ~ Gathered in the Word
From page 54 of Gathered in the Word: Praying the Scripture in Small Groups by Norvene Vest. Copyright © 1996 by Norvene Vest. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Upper Room Books. http://bookstore.upperroom.org/ Learn more about or purchase this book.
Today’s Question:
Be intentional about how you listen to someone today, and intentionally listen for the Spirit during your devotional time.
Today’s Scripture:
Your decrees are righteous forever; give me understanding that I may live.~~Psalm 119:144, NRSV
This Week: pray for those who serve the homeless.
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This week we remember:
Donald M. Baillie (October 31)
Born in 1887, Donald M. Baillie was a Scottish pastor, teacher, systematic theologian, and ecumenist; considered one of the most influential Presbyterian scholars of the twentieth century. Baillie was Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Andrews University from 1934 until the time of his death in 1954.
Baillie believed that any Christian spiritual or devotional life needed a foundation based on a sense of the Trinity as a living reality. Beyond this, just as Jesus bore the essence of God through the incarnation in his life, he also bore the divine nature of atonement through his passion and death on the cross. For Baillie, the church truly becomes the body of Christ in the world to tell the sacred story of what God has done in Jesus Christ.
In The Theology of the Sacraments (1957) Baillie argued that the sacraments were concentrations of the much more widespread sacramental significance of everyday life. Why else, he posited, would Jesus incorporate the divine essence in something as mundane and commonplace as bread and wine? For him the sacraments were the vehicle through which the divine word broke into the wider world and sanctified it.
If Donald M. Baillie had taken the Spiritual Types Test, he probably would have been a Sage. Donald M. Baillie is remembered on October 31.
[Excerpted with permission from the entry on Donald M. Baillie by Samuel F. (Skip) Parvin, from The Upper Room Dictionary of Christian Spiritual Formation, edited by Keith Beasley-Topliffe. Copyright © 2003 by Upper Room Books®. All rights reserved.]
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Lectionary Readings:
(Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library)
Habakkuk 1:1 The revelation which Habakkuk the prophet saw. 2 LORD,* how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you “Violence!” and will you not save? 3 Why do you show me iniquity, and look at perversity? For destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up. 4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted.;2:1 I will stand at my watch, and set myself on the ramparts, and will look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
2 The LORD answered me, “Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who runs may read it. 3 For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hurries toward the end, and won’t prove false. Though it takes time, wait for it; because it will surely come. It won’t delay. 4 Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright in him, but the righteous will live by his faith. (Messianic WEB)
Psalm 119:TZADI
137 You are righteous, LORD.
Your judgments are upright.
138 You have commanded your statutes in righteousness.
They are fully trustworthy.
139 My zeal wears me out,
because my enemies ignore your words.
140 Your promises have been thoroughly tested,
and your servant loves them.
141 I am small and despised.
I don’t forget your precepts.
142 Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness.
Your Torah is truth.
143 Trouble and anguish have taken hold of me.
Your commandments are my delight.
144 Your testimonies are righteous forever.
Give me understanding, that I may live.(Messianic WEB)
2 Thessalonians 1:1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the assembly of the Thessalonians in God our Father, and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.
3 We are bound to always give thanks to God for you, brothers,* even as it is appropriate, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of each and every one of you towards one another abounds; 4 so that we ourselves boast about you in the assemblies of God for your perseverance and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions which you endure.11 To this end we also pray always for you, that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire of goodness and work of faith, with power; 12 that the name of our Lord Yeshua† may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.(Messianic WEB)
Luke 19:1 He entered and was passing through Jericho. 2 There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Yeshua was, and couldn’t because of the crowd, because he was short. 4 He ran on ahead, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way. 5 When Yeshua came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 6 He hurried, came down, and received him joyfully. 7 When they saw it, they all murmured, saying, “He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.”
8 Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much.”
9 Yeshua said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”(Messianic WEB)
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