Day 42

Praying in the doorway

Shall we close in prayer? Seems right…

Praying Hebrews 11:32-40

What more can we say, Yahweh? Your gift of faith is everywhere. Stories pack pages. We can’t name all the names of the people You’ve empowered. You have proven Yourself through Your people.

Thank You for Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Elijah, Elisha, and the rest) who by faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the raging of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle, and put foreign armies to flight.

Conquer kingdoms and hearts through us. Make us just and give us faith enough to administer justice. Give us faith to wait on promises. Give us faith that shuts down the powers that would crush us. Give us faith that protects, faith that secures, faith that rescues, faith that empowers, faith that goes ahead. By faith, let our weakness be transformed into strength.

Give us back our dead. By faith we ask.

Give us faith enough to endure death, even long death, even life that feels like death, in order to gain a better resurrection.

It has not always been easy for your people. We have been mocked and scourged, made slaves and imprisoned. We’ve been stoned, sawed in two, cut through. We have wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated.

We pray “we” with our brothers and sisters, but few of us today have felt the same sting of suffering. The world was not worthy of them.

Show us how to live her and now in a way our world does not deserve. Make us a grace to our neighbors. And give us persevering faith that isn’t looking for affirmation.

All these people who went before us were approved through their faith. Approve us through our faith. Give us the gift of faith. Fan in us the flame of faith, and then let it loose like wildfire.

Thank You for Jesus, the One who makes us perfect. Thank You for the cloud of witnesses who waited for us. Bless us, all of us together, with our promised inheritance. Open up the gates and welcome us Home.

A Prayer of Examen

The examen prayer originates with Saint Ignatius of Loyola. People have been praying it for centuries. The idea is to pay attention to what God’s doing in your life by taking time to sit with your experiences.

In the prayer (after a moment of devoted silence) a person takes time to look back (at the last few hours, at a day, a week, a year…) first with gratitude and then with curiosity, seeking God’s presence. In an examen prayer we ask, “When did I feel close to God?” and “When did I feel far from God?” Then we respond to what we’ve noticed. We ask God what He wants to show us. If we need to confess sin, we do. If we need to express more gratitude, we do that. Finally, we look ahead with excitement alongside our Father, ending in shared silence.

This seems like the perfect prayer for the end of a long meditation.

So, on our last day in Hebrews 11, let’s take some time to process what we’ve learned, how we’ve been challenged, where we’re noticing growth, and where we’re still longing for revelation.

Before you pray, you might look back through your notes to see what themes emerge.

Thank You, Yahweh, for this time with You in Hebrews 11.

Thank you for _________________________________________________.

I felt close to You when _________________________________________.

I felt distance from you when ____________________________________.

As I look back at this time, reveal Yourself to me.

What do You want to show me?

What do You want me to know?

What do You want me to change?

I confess that I have _______________________________.

I confess that I have not______________________________.

I have seen Your more clearly and You are ____________________________.

I still have questions about _____________________________________.

As I look ahead to a life lived by faith, I’m excited about ________________.

In the name of your Son, the one who makes everything perfect, I pray.

Amen.

One last thing…

Maybe you’ve noticed the artwork at the top of each day’s meditation. For this particular study, I picked the work of Russian marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky. I first encountered his work as I was writing about the loss of my brother and somehow stumbled upon The Ninth Wave. It’s the painting we featured in Week 3. It’s a deeply spiritual work about the hope we have in Christ. If you look at the bottom left corner, ship-wrecked sailors cling to a cross-shaped mast.

It makes sense that we’d feature ocean art given the title of this whole thing: Deep Water. But choosing these paintings from this painter was rooted in more than a shallow association.

Aivazovsky’s real gift is in painting water that is both translucent and opaque. The light hits the waves, and suddenly they’re glass. Shadows turn water solid, like walls or floors.

That’s how it is out on the ocean.

Ships and masts and men float on green blue seas, and sometimes the green blue, the way it stretches uninterrupted, it seems like a field or a wavy parking lot. Like an expanse of flat nothing.

But then you step out onto it and fall into it. The surface of the water is easy to break through.

Or you see a dolphin or shark or turtle swim up beside the boat—so easy to see in the now-invisible liquid. Was it invisible a moment before? Why hadn’t I noticed? The surface of the water is easy to see through.

Or you shine a light on it…

What I hope you know (and I suspect you do) is that there is an invisible world that’s not actually all that invisible. If you look, you’ll see: it is teeming with life.

Some people never notice. But many do. Some set out upon it…

When Jesus calls Simon (Peter), He says, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

It is my favorite definition of living by faith.