Lectio Divina and Making Room Essay

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Action and Reflection

Reading, meditating, praying and contemplating are the four steps of the Lectio Divina. By inviting the community to take part in this process, my goal was to increase the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community and in the hearts and minds of the people in my community. By directly engaging with this community through prayer walks in the neighborhood and prayer readings followed by an observation of silence, I was able to engage with the members of the community and get to know them, share experiences with them, and discuss these experiences in a focus group like setting. These actions all together served to provide me with much reflection as I felt the more we all directly engaged with the God, the more the Spirit was felt among us in a very positive way.

The prayer-walks through the neighborhood were particularly meaningful as the community is a good one for walking in and many neighbors are about when the weather is nice outside. Everyone is friendly and always saying hello. Even though we are praying during our prayer walk, it feels right to stop from time to time to talk to some of the neighbors and show that we are part of the community. We tell them what we are doing and we invite them to join us or to give us any intention that they might like us to remember during our prayers. People are particularly touched by the idea that you are willing to pray for them. This is something that Green has noticed among nurses working with patients, who request prayer for themselves. And it is something Dever has noted is important to consider when engaging in prayer: we are not just praying for ourselves but for the intentions of others as well, that God might work through them and enter into their lives and minds and hearts as well. When people see that you are willing to take on their concerns and issues they really begin to understand what you are about, that you live for union with God. They are quite often touched by this and moved to want to be part of that union with you.

During our prayer walks, therefore, I am always interested in talking to neighbors when I see them even if it is only briefly and even if it is only to see how they are and if there is anything they need. Nothing brings one into sympathy with your aim like solicitation, and my aim was to bring them into sympathy with God and into union with the Spirit. By sharing my care and concern for them, just as Christ commanded his disciples to do—going two by two ahead of Him, healing the sick, and showing God’s concern for them—the Spirit was moving me to show God’s concern for His people in the community.

Those who wanted to join were inviting for prayer readings followed by silence and contemplation. This was an activity that very many enjoyed because it gave them an opportunity in the busy lives to spend some time just with the Word of God, with their own thoughts, and with God speaking to Him and listening back in silence. At the focus group meeting, we shared these experiences and everyone was quite happy and pleased with the outcomes and effects that they were seeing in their own lives. They talked about feeling stronger, more at peace than they had before. No matter what it was, what issue, what concern they were particularly praying for, they knew that God was there with them, never going to leave their side. It was a great joy for me personally to hear this, as it confirmed for me that the Spirit was indeed with us.

Theological Rationale

The theological rationale for speaking to members of the community and to neighbors during the prayer-walks, for asking them if there was anything that they would like me to pray for in particular to help them in their lives, and for inviting them to prayer readings and contemplations is based in the readings of Luke 10:1-12—particularly in these verses: “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.” What we see here is Our Lord commanding us to be about His business, preparing the way for Him, just as John the Baptist did when He was coming to forgive the sins of the world. John the Baptist prepared the way by preaching repentance and teaching the people: he fasted, and did penance as an example of what one needed to do to amend his life. Then when God appeared in their midst, they understood—and were ready to hear His words more clearly.

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His way had been prepared.

This is what Christ was getting at when he asked His disciples to go two by two before Him to prepare His way. They were not to replace Christ but were rather going to be the new John the Baptists—preparing the way so that the hearts and minds of the people could be opened to God. By showing the charity of God, healing the sick, and bringing peace to men of good will, the early Christians were able to work with the Spirit and spread the love of God that God wanted spread around. It takes effort and perseverance and not everyone is going to respond in the same manner. But that is all part of the plan and even God writes straight with crooked arrows (Sheen).

The theological rationale for this practice is also located in the fact that God has specifically requested it of us: As the Georgia Baptist Mission Board has stated, “intercession is hard work. It means…

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…do not know what to make of prayer. They feel in some way that it is a type of superstition that they do not understood, so it makes them uneasy. That was one thing we actually learned from the focus group. Another was that those who did engage in prayer did feel that the Spirit was with them and the testified that they were able to discern God’s will for them over the course of time.

What the Spirit is Calling Me to Do

This practice had a significant effect on me as well, for I began to see how the Spirit was leading me and what it was calling me to do. Engaging with the community in this manner had never been something that I had thought to do, but upon doing it I felt that this was simply a fantastic opportunity to engage in the kind of missionary work that Our Lord wants us to do to prepare His way to enter into the hearts and minds of His children, who may be waiting for His visit and not even knowing it.

I was sincerely touched by the good will of the members of the community and their good will gestures back to me—their friendliness and their positive reception of me showed that the Spirit was leading me in a good direction. As Smith points out, Christianity in general so positively affects the mood and the mind when received by people of peace and good will that it really should be the recommended medicine of our times.

Yet for some reason people are afraid of bringing up Christ and Christianity as though it has become a taboo topic in our modern world. The fact that I brought it up so freely, without pushing anyone to convert but rather asking if there was anything I could do for them by praying for an intention, this was actually a big relief for them. They were so grateful to have someone remind them of Christ, to speak openly of God—not in a way that was pushy but rather in a way that was genuinely helpful and charitable. They were impressed by this and I could tell it lifted them in their spirits.

Thus, I think the Spirit is definitely calling me in this direction and inviting me to continue with this practice. My goal is to get to know the community and the community to know me so that we can all begin to share in one another’s lives and have a meaningful impact on one another’s spiritual lives. My next steps, therefore, are to make my prayer walks a regular part of my life and to increase my efforts to cover even more ground in my community. If this takes more time in my day, I am okay doing that because I feel it is well worth the effort. Christ gave three years of His life to His missionary work before making the ultimate sacrifice for….....

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