Day 18

Today's Scripture is suitable to use with Imaginative Contemplation or Lectio Divina

Stilling: Come into the presence of God and still yourself

Grace: In this time of anxiety, to see your life more as God sees it. To see with God your deeper self, the person behind all the activity, a person made in God’s image.

Prayer Suggestion: Listen to Peter telling his story. Imagine yourself as a Jew or as a gentile - what difference would it make in the way you hear the story?

You may like to ponder on what the equivalent to the Jewish dietary laws would be for you.

Acts 11:4-18 HCSB

Peter began to explain to them in an orderly sequence, saying:

“I was in the town of Joppa praying, and I saw, in a visionary state, an object that resembled a large sheet coming down, being lowered by its four corners from heaven, and it came to me. When I looked closely and considered it, I saw the four-footed animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky.

Then I also heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat!’

“‘No, Lord!’ I said. ‘For nothing common or ritually unclean has ever entered my mouth!’

But a voice answered from heaven a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call common.’

“Now this happened three times, and then everything was drawn up again into heaven.

At that very moment, three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were.

Then the Spirit told me to accompany them with no doubts at all. These six brothers accompanied me, and we went into the man’s house.

He reported to us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa, and call for Simon, who is also named Peter.

He will speak a message to you that you and all your household will be saved by.’

“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came down on them, just as on us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’

Therefore, if God gave them the same gift that He also gave to us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, how could I possibly hinder God?”

When they heard this they became silent.

Then they glorified God, saying, “So God has granted repentance resulting in life even to the Gentiles!”

Conversation: Have a talk with Jesus about what has struck you during this meditation.

Finish with a final prayer such as the Lord's Prayer/Our Father

I am Your Creator

I created you to praise, reverence and serve me.

Do not ever be afraid of me

Even if you sin monstrously,

Because

I do good to those who do not do good,

Even to those who hate me.

I bless those who curse me;

I love those who do not love me;

And I am kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

If you were my enemy, I would still love you.

Were you to steal from me,

I wouldn't ask for it back.

I am merciful;

I don't judge;

I don't condemn;

And I forgive, O yes I forgive, Even if you come back to me to be forgiven

Seventy times seven every day.

Now are you beginning to understand‘Why’ so many people do not believe I exist?

They can't believe in such goodness.

(Patrick Purnell SJ)

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