The theme of this weekend is “Listening to God.”  We are using our time to explore a variety of ways to listen with our whole being.  That includes using the labyrinth, icons, Scripture, conversations with each other, and, of course, prayer beads.  We are blessed to have so many ways to connect with our loving God!

In honor of this retreat I am reposting a devotion I wrote last year that is designed to help us listen.

Peace, Kristen

Cross: In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Invitatory Bead: “Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says.”  (Deuteronomy 5:27, NIV)

Resurrection Bead: Christ lives so that I may draw near.

Each Cruciform Bead: “Lord, I draw near.”

Each Week Bead: “Open my ears that I may hear you.”

Resurrection Bead: Christ lives so that I may draw near.  Hallelujah.

Invitatory Bead: recite The Lord’s Prayer

Cross: In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Now, you’re welcome to go up and see the baby, but he’s sleeping, so be a bit quiet.  But that’s just as well because there’s really no need to say anything; in fact, it’s better if you just sit and behold the miracle of what’s happening here.  You can sit quietly and take it all in.  Take all the time you need, there’s plenty of room.  And I see you’ve brought your prayer beads with you!  That’s great.  Feel free to use them to really behold. 

Peace be with you, and glory to God in the highest!

Cross: Behold! 

Invitatory Bead: “So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.”  (Luke 2:16, NIV)

1^st Cruciform Bead: Behold the baby – which is Christ the Lord – lying in a manger.

1^st set of Week Beads: use each bead to see Jesus, to watch him sleep, to behold his birth, and to revel in the fact that God is with us.

2^nd Cruciform Bead: Behold his parents, Mary and Joseph, as they watch over him.

2^nd set of Week Beads: use each bead to see Mary and Joseph as they look with love upon their newborn son.  See them as they watch this reception by the shepherds and other locals, as they hear the glad tidings of the angels, and as they ponder in their hearts what it means that Jesus – their tiny baby – is the Son of God.

3^rd Cruciform Bead: Behold the shepherds and other local visitors as they come to see this baby wrapped in swaddling cloths.

3^rd set of Week Beads: use each bead to watch as people arrive to see this baby, having just heard that this is the Messiah, the one that has been promised by God throughout the generations.  Observe as they witness how God has fulfilled His promise and begin to realize the miracle that is unfolding before them.

4^th Cruciform Bead: Behold the angels who proclaim, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14, NIV)

4^th set of Week Beads: use each bead to hear the angels rejoicing as they spread the good news of Christ’s birth to all of creation.

Invitatory Bead: recite The Lord’s Prayer

Cross: In the name and spirit of Christ Jesus, who is born this day, Amen.

(Our thanks to Pamela Hawkins and The Upper Room for sharing Pamela’s book, Behold! Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent, which inspired and encouraged us to “behold” this season.)

This message is clear in the fourth chapter of Pamela Hawkins’ book, Behold! Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent.  It is focused on how Advent is filled with God’s promise of salvation for this world that He created, and how that promise is based in the everlasting love that God has for us.  God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us, so much so that He came in the form of a tiny baby to be born among us, live with us, and offer us the salvation he has promised for generations. 

Let us take time in these last few days of Advent to remember God’s steadfast love for us. 

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Invitatory Bead: “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”  (Luke 1:54-55, NRSV)

1^st Cruciform Bead: Loving God, we praise you for your steadfast love for us.

1^st set of Week Beads: use each bead to praise God for His love for you and for others.

2^nd Cruciform Bead: Yet, Lord, I have not always been open to receiving your love.

2^nd set of Week Beads: use each bead to confess the times when you haven’t been willing to receive God’s gift of love for you, or have even rebuffed it.

3^rd Cruciform Bead: Lord, help me to see the many ways in which you reveal your love to me.

3^rd set of Week Beads: use each bead to consider the many ways in which God reveals His love to you.  Take the opportunity to consider the times when you may not even notice God’s love being revealed to you.

4^th Cruciform Bead: Lord, help me to be a sign of your love to others.

4^th set of Week Beads: use each bead to consider the ways in which you can serve as a sign of God’s love for others.

Invitatory Bead: recite The Lord’s Prayer

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray, Amen

Click here for more information about Behold! Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent.

Advent is a perfect time to remember and nurture our faith.  As we prepare for Christmas Day we are reminded of what the world was like in that time before Christ was born.  For generations the Israelites had been promised that God would send a Messiah to save his chosen people, but they had to wait for a long period of time, and in the meantime they experienced repeated threats to their country, their religion, and their way of life.  But their faith sustained them until that glorious night when the angels called them to “behold!” 

Today, faith is as critical as ever.  In a world filled with war and famine, financial crises and violence, it is often hard to remember that God loves us and is here to offer salvation.  But faith gets us through the darkness, helps us to see the light, and compels us to share the light with others.  That’s what Advent is about: being faithful, and sharing that faith with those who need it most.  And such faith is nurtured through prayer. 

As a side note, in her book Pam Hawkins highlights one prayer practice for each of the four weeks of Advent.  It just so happens that this third week is about prayer beads.  This week, participants in The Upper Room’s eRetreat course on Pam’s book will be learning how to make prayer beads using a video that I taped for them.  We welcome the eRetreat course participants and others who are being introduced to this wonderful prayer practice. 

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Invitatory Bead: “The spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.”  (Isaiah 61:1, NIV)

1^st Cruciform Bead: Loving God, you are faithful in every way.

1^st set of Week Beads: use each bead to consider the ways in which God is faithful to us.

2^nd Cruciform Bead: Yet, Lord, there are many people who do not know of your faithfulness. 

2^nd set of Week Beads: use each bead to think about all of the people who need to hear of God’s faithful love for them.  Consider “the poor . . . the brokenhearted . . . and the prisoners of darkness.”  (Isaiah 61:1)

3^rd Cruciform Bead: Lord, we confess that we have not always been faithful, nor have we shared the good news of your love with those who need it most.

3^rd set of Week Beads: use each bead to confess the times when you have not shared God’s love with people in need.

4^th Cruciform Bead: Lord, help me to share the good news of your faithfulness with the waiting world.  

4^th set of Week Beads: use each bead to consider the ways in which you can reveal and share the good news of the birth of Jesus Christ with others.

Invitatory Bead: recite The Lord’s Prayer

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray, Amen

Click here for more information about Behold! Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent.

Last week Pamela and I worked together to lead the Advent staff retreat for The Upper Room Ministries and General Board of Discipleship.  It was a natural partnership, given that Pamela highlights the use of prayer beads in chapter three of Behold!  At the end of the retreat, Pam led the staff through a prayer bead devotion she had written based on the themes from Behold! for the second week of Advent, and was gracious enough to share it with you here. 

From Pamela:

As I think back to the time a friend first gave me some prayer beads, I remember how I was immediately drawn to them. My church tradition had not included the use of prayer beads, at least not in any public communal way. And yet when I would go to church with my Catholic friends, or even to their homes, I was intrigued by the men and women, fathers and mothers, who were bowed in prayer with rosaries in hand. I secretly longed for beads of my own, longed to hold a strand of prayers between my fingers. Each curve of wood and knot of cord seemed sacred to me, the whole practice was full of mystery.

In this season of Advent, I find my prayer beads to continue to help me touch and hold onto the mystery of prayer. When my prayer attention is more vulnerable than ever to distractions of a season sometimes overtaken by shine, glitter, and glare, my simple strand of beads requires me to slow down, hold fast, and remember the prayers of my Advent life. Each bead counts. Each bead contains value. Each bead was formed by another child of God from somewhere in God’s world, and now, as I pray for the world God loves, I find that my own prayers wrap around the surface of the beads, much like a gift is wrapped for a loved one.

May we all take time this season to wait, watch, hold, and behold God’s waiting world. May you find the use of prayer beads to be one way to wait and prepare for the One who is to come.

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Invitatory Bead: “Comfort, comfort my people!” says your God.  (Isaiah 40:1, CEB)

1^st Cruciform Bead: God of all time, leveler of all things high and low, come reveal our webs of apathy and sin with your holy, sweeping light.

1^st set of Week Beads: use each bead to confess your sins to God.

2^nd Cruciform Bead: Let me hear what the Lord God says, because he speaks peace to his people and to his faithful ones. (Psalm 85:8a)

2^nd set of Week Beads: use each bead to think about God’s love and peace as revealed in Scripture.

3^rd Cruciform Bead: Lord, help me to prepare my life to reflect your promise to others while “waiting for a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” (2 Peter 3:13)

3^rd set of Week Beads: use each bead to name someone or some place in the waiting world in need of God’s promises of love, mercy, and justice.

4^th Cruciform Bead: Lord, help me to prepare for your coming, help me prepare a way in my life to share the good news of your presence in the world.

4^th set of Week Beads: use each bead to name the ways in which you can reveal and share the good news of Jesus to others.

Invitatory Bead: recite The Lord’s Prayer

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray, Amen

Click here for more information about Behold! Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent.

I was blessed enormously this week by getting to spend two days with The Upper Room staff as well as employees of the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville, Tennessee.  I was there to film a video on how to make prayer beads (which is part of their eRetreat course for Advent; the focus is on Pamela Hawkins’ book Behold: Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent) and to co-lead the staff Advent retreat with Pamela.  She spent the morning helping us think about how to “Behold!” and then I talked about prayer beads and taught everyone how to make their own set.  It was so wonderful to get to worship, sing, laugh, work, and pray with The Upper Room staff!  It was also really wonderful to get to work with Pamela. 

One of the special parts of the week was working with Pamela to pair my prayer bead devotion format with the themes in her book.  As a result, I decided to use her book as the focus for our prayer devotions this season! 

This first devotion is based on the first chapter in her book, which is about “preparation.”  Use this devotion and think about how you can prepare for the coming of the Christ child.

Peace, Kristen

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray.  Amen

Invitatory Bead: “From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.”  (Isaiah 64:4, NRSV)

First Cruciform Bead: Lord, your love for us is steadfast even though we have sinned and turned away from you.

First set of Week Beads: use each week bead to confess your sins to God.

Second Cruciform Bead: Lord, we wait for you to restore us.  We wait for you to come and save us.

Second set of Week Beads: use each week bead to name the people and places in your life and in this world that need restoration.

Third Cruciform Bead: Lord, you have graciously blessed each of us with many spiritual gifts.  Help us to use them faithfully as we patiently await the arrival of your Son.

Third set of Week Beads: use each bead to consider the spiritual gifts with which God has blessed you and the ways in which you can use them during this season of Advent.  (A sample list of spiritual gifts that is  included in Behold! are “patience, listening, prayer, compassion, wisdom, gentleness, teaching, faith, peace, healing, etc.” (p. 31))

Fourth Cruciform Bead: Lord, there are many signs that you are coming to save us.  Help us to see them and give thanks.

Fourth set of Week Beads: use each bead to consider the signs of the coming of the Christ child in the season of Advent, and give thanks for them.

Invitatory Bead: Recite the Lord’s Prayer

Cross: In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray.  Amen.

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Peace, Kristen

Since posting that devotion I’ve been thinking that Ashley’s quote has a great deal of meaning for ourselves as well.  As I wrote during our Lenten journey, though we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, we often struggle to do that given our own struggles with low self-esteem, self-loathing, etc.  It’s very hard to love others if we don’t even love ourselves.  And it occurred to me that maybe we need to learn some compassion – some empathy – for ourselves, which may come only from taking a deep breath and listening to that voice within us, the one we often try to drown out by keeping busy and focusing on others and staying so distracted by technology.   We are afraid of what we might hear. 

I confess that certainly applies to me.  I can compete with the best of them when it comes to juggling multiple responsibilities and finding ways to distract myself.  For me, I think that’s a lot because there’s a lot of fear there.  As I’ve talked about before, I am a survivor of sexual assault and for most of my life I’ve lived from a place of fear.  It colors almost every aspect of my life.  But in the past six months I’ve prayed for the ability to relinquish that fear – once and for all – so that I can live fully from a place of peace – God’s peace.  And while that’s a process, I think one of the keys to learning to live in peace is being able to listen to the voice of God within me.  I think if I can do that then I can develop empathy for myself and act from that place of self-love.  I can only imagine how much more I will be able to love God and my neighbor by learning to love myself.  That is the best prayer I can think of for us as individuals.

And so I encourage you to use this devotion to listen to the voice of God within you.  Take time to get really still and quiet – away from any potential distractions – and practice being comfortable with yourself and God in the silence.  From that place I pray that you will listen to that still, small voice inside you – the one that reminds you of who God created you to be - and respond with love and grace.  It may take some time before you are really comfortable doing this, but if you can be brave and persistent and stick with it I believe strongly that you will experience God’s grace in ways you never expected. 

Cross: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Invitatory Bead: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.”  (Psalm 139:23 NRSV)

1st Cruciform Bead: Lord, you loved me enough to create me in your image.  Help me to be still and listen to what you have to say to me; grant me the courage and grace to hear what you have to say, and to be reminded of who you created me to be.

1st set of Week Beads: use each bead to just listen to what you are feeling and thinking when all the noise is turned off, and to hear God speaking directly to you.

Note: if necessary, you may want to use all 4 sets of week beads to just listen.  Do this as often as necessary until you reach a point where it becomes easier to sit still and listen to God.  Once that happens, continue with the remainder of the devotion.

2nd Cruciform Bead: Lord, help me to love myself in the way that you love me, to forgive myself for _________, to accept myself as you have created me, to empathize with myself.

2nd set of Week Beads: use each bead to follow God’s lead in forgiving, accepting, and practicing empathy for yourself.

3rd Cruciform Bead: Lord, help me to practice acts of love and acceptance for myself in the following ways:

3rd set of Week Beads: use each bead to consider ways to honor and love yourself that glorify God.

4th Cruciform Bead: Lord, I pray for the following:

4th set of Week Beads: use each bead to lift up prayer concerns for yourself.

Invitatory Bead: recite the Lord’s Prayer

Cross: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

But I have to say that the watershed moment—the one in which I really understood the purpose of this calling—occurred this past July while my family and I were at The Upper Room’s SOULfeast conference.  As most of you know, I was there to lead three workshops on prayer beads (two for adults and one for children).  While this was not the first time I’d spoken about prayer beads it was the first time my workshop was one of many offerings that participants could choose to attend.  Previously, I’d done other smaller retreats where my workshop was the only one, or one of only two or three workshops, making it somewhat inevitable that people would show up.  But at SOULfeast participants had many wonderful workshop choices like the life of Henri Nouwen, designing worship spaces, spirituality and photography, praying with children, and many others.  In fact, there were so many that interested me that I seriously considered ditching my workshop (as it was, I’ve heard myself speak many times before) for one of the others.  I didn’t however, and arrived in my room ready to receive whoever wanted to learn about prayer beads. 

When the first ten people showed up I was happy.  “This is a respectable size group,” I thought to myself, and continued to busy myself with workshop preparations.  The next time I looked up there were twenty-five or so people in the room.  ”Wow!” I thought.  “This is great!”  But then they kept coming, and coming, and coming, until, eventually, there were no more seats.  I couldn’t believe it.  Since the workshop was going to be offered twice we turned people away from the first workshop, thinking they’d have another opportunity to attend later in the week.  But when it was time for the second workshop and the same thing happened, we decided to just let people sit on the floors and the piano bench, lean on the door posts or stand in the hallway.  And they did!  And that’s when I started to feel really overwhelmed by this prayer bead calling. 

But it didn’t stop there.  After the workshop, people came up to me clutching the prayer beads and speaking with great enthusiasm about how excited they were to learn of this new tool.  They stopped me in the bookstore and on the sidewalk, wanting to tell me about how much the beads meant to them.  They showed up in droves to the after-worship event late one Wednesday night to make prayer bead strands for people in other countries, and as they sat happily designing their mission offerings they talked about how they were going to take the good news about prayer beads to their own churches and families.  One woman even tearfully shared how the prayer beads had already enhanced her time with God in the two short days she’d had them.  Though I’d heard these types of testimonies from people prior to SOULfeast, hearing so many stories all at once was pretty humbling.  By the time I arrived at the closing worship service I must say I was a bit of a mess.  I was excited and humbled and overwhelmed and terrified, all in one fell swoop.  As such, I sat amongst my fellow SOULfeasters and just wept, a blithering, soppy, joyful mess.

While I wanted to go home immediately and blog about this experience, it was probably best that I had to return home to unpacked boxes and an unfinished book draft that needed my immediate attention.  I needed some time really to process the experience and figure out what it meant.  And so here I am, three months later, finally able to talk and blog about it. 

There are several things that I’ve figured out at this juncture of the journey.  First, God can and does speak to us when we least expect it—at the oddest of times and in the strangest of places.  Thus, we not only have to be listening but also open for whatever may come our way.  Second, this whole prayer bead thing is very real.  Clearly, there is a great yearning for ways to connect more deeply with God, and prayer beads are one way of doing that.  And third, there seems to be a particular need for Protestants to hear about prayer beads.  We weren’t as lucky as our Catholic brethren who have retained the use of the rosary throughout the centuries, and in some areas of our country and world there is almost a sense of taboo when it comes to prayer beads among Protestants.  Yet prayer beads are part of our heritage as well, and my experience over the past two years proves that once you explain the rich history and symbolism of this ancient prayer tool, Protestants are willing to joyfully reclaim it in practice, even if it means sitting on the floor for more than an hour.

Having said all that I want to add that I’m deeply touched, profoundly changed, and extremely thankful for this opportunity to make and teach and write about prayer beads.  My prayer is that I can continue faithfully to follow this calling, even one with such quirky beginnings.