Sunday, August 9 – Always Trying, Always Failing, Always Trying Again

[full email]: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-aug9

[excerpt from email]:  “We also experience the wind and the waves. … Our initial trust begins to waver when things get rough. Our focus shifts, and we begin to sink. Jesus remains patient. He gives us relief for a while, and then once again another storm arises. We try, we fail, we sink. If we call for help, he rescues us and gives a breather. Then the cycle starts over: the storm, the initial burst of trust, the wind and the waves, doubts, the sinking. The chief things to worry about are sinking without calling out for help, or going ashore and staying there. … One description of a disciple might be this: always trying, always failing, always trying again.” – Thomas Keating, Reawakenings

Examen:  Notice that upon each crying out in the Scripture, the response is “at once” and “immediately.” Are there places in your life where you have been holding back out of fear, doubt, hesitancy about the unknown? Help is available.

Regarding today’s Gospel, a friend this morning said, “Peter was looking for Results; Jesus was asking for Trust.”

I loved Diane-Ellen’s comment – I believe it was, “There’s holiness in failure.” The more I thought about it, the more I agreed. What an insight. I’ve never heard anything like that but it’s certainly true. Thanks, Diane-Ellen.

Sunday, August 9: Always Trying, Always Failing, Always Trying Again

The major place in my life I have been holding back, partly due to doubt and partly pandemic fear, is my next employment. I had discerned about ten years ago a call to write a book, and several moves, jobs, life changes put the book writing on hold. I was writing small group studies and completing them in the group, but nothing published outside the small group. Now, I am in a new locale, am seriously revisiting this call and am starting to frame out the book. Oh, Lord, make haste to help me! And thank You in advance for the answers to my plea.  <3 linda

A lot of my holding back has to do with letting of what I want and accepting, embracing  the “now.  I live in an intergeneration milieu, engaged in active pastoral ministry. I look around,  people my age have gone/are going into places where there are only aging people with all sorts of health issues, where to do one thing like a medical appointment is a whole day affair where I now can manage that, perhaps taking an hour of my day and respond to several people who need a listening ear. Anyway you get the drift.

This phrase holds my attention: “One description of a disciple: always trying, always failing, always trying again.

It holds my attention, arouses my fear challenges TRUST.

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