“Father of Lights” is a prayer I composed and prayed daily for months a number of years back. From time to time, I go back to it and use it as a part of my own personal daily litany. Whenever I have shared it here on LifeBrook, readers seem to appreciate it. As readership is consistently changing, I publish it at least once each year, sometimes more often. I find it a positive, declarative prayer of praise and thankfulness. It is my sincere hope that you find it as helpful as I have.
Father of Lights
Father of Lights, you have said that in aligning with you I am a Child of the Light. I thank you for that honor and privilege and also thank you that you have made me a new creation. Today, I seek to take possession of my reborn identity in you and I thank you for providing me with the ability to do so, through the blessed work of the Holy Spirit.
Father, I know you have placed in me from birth a right, preserving and steadfast spirit and I know that the Holy Spirit will empower me to contact, develop, embrace and enhance those divine qualities, all to your glory and for the sake of others as well as for the purpose of growing in sacred character.
I know Father that above all, you are a God of restoration and a God of renewal. I know that according to your holy Word, that you are, at this very moment, renewing in me the mind of Christ – the most sacred mind. Your Spirit is at work in me today, enabling me to live a life of integrity, enthusiasm and empowering me to maintain a commitment to excellence. I thank you Father for your faithfulness and the blessings you are bestowing on me today, both seen and unseen.
Father, thank you for your unfailing faithfulness. You have proven time and time again that you are there, walking as my companion, even when I don’t see you and even more when I don’t acknowledge your presence. I know that you have said that you desire my best and that all things, whether I can understand them or not, work together for my greatest good. Therefore, looking to you, I expect good and good alone.
Father of Lights:
I thank you for your presence with me;
I thank you for your presence in me;
I thank you for protecting me;
I thank you for providing for me;
I thank you for empowering me.
I am grateful my Lord, knowing that I will find in you all I will ever need.
(In the name of Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega – the name at which every knee shall
Provinces and regions of the Philippines (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As many of you may have heard, the Philippines was rocked today by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. The last track of the death toll I heard was 30, and that number is certain to rise. Let us remember in prayer those suffering from this tragedy and may God’s healing light and unending love flow freely in the earthquake areas.
Beginning of 11th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lord, I indeed arise and thank you that my light has come and that your glory has risen upon me.
Although darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the people, Lord you have risen upon me and placed the light of your glory over me. Because of the brightness of this new dawn over me, others can witness your love and glory through my thoughts, words, and deeds.
Lord, I thank you for this blessing and this opportunity to serve you in this dark and desperate age. May I be a positive blessing to those near me today.
By faith, call those things that are divine truth in the spiritual realm into being in the natural realm. It is not a magic formula or wishful thinking. It is operating within the laws of God’s Word……………Do not use your words to confirm or mold negative situations in your life. Use your words and God’s Word to change those situations. Jesus confirmed the power of the spoken word in John 6:63: “Every word I’ve spoken to you is a Spirit-word, and so it is life-making.” (Message)………Spirit-words – God’s words coming out of your mouth because they are in your heart – are life-making…..God’s Word out of your mouth is filled with the same power it had coming out of His mouth. God’s Word never goes out without producing an effect. It is never powerless (see Isaiah 55:11). When you speak His Word, His power is behind it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .And do not fall for the devil’s lie that it is too late for you. If you are alive and still talking, it is not too late! Use your voice to cry out and prepare the way God says is yours, and watch Him release the full force of his favor toward you as you walk out, and speak out, His Word.
An SVG map of China with Yunnan province highlighted Legend: Image:China map legend.png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Urgently requesting prayer for those impacted by Friday’s devastating earthquake in Southwest China. As of now there are at least 80 dead with many more injured and missing. It seems Guizhou and Yunnan Provinces were hardest hit. LifeBrook has many friends in this part of China.
English: The Lord Jesus Christ in the image of Good Shepherd. Early Christian trsdition of symbolism. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mick Turner
Lord, we affirm and accept our status as a new creations in Christ and we thank you for making us a joint heirs with your Son, Jesus Christ. We proclaim and also affirm that we are among the chosen, the fortunate ones you have selected as your holy and beloved.
Father, we thank you for piercing the darkness and searching for us and we especially thank you for your patient endurance in pursuing us, especially when we were fleeing and hiding from your Light.
We are eternally grateful Father that you were steadfast in your love for us and that you found us, embraced us, and carried us out of this dark kingdom. We awakened in the brilliance of the One True Light which fills your glorious kingdom – indeed Lord, the New Canaan, the realm of your sinless Son who you loved even before the world began.
Dear Lord, we know in our minds and in our hearts, and we affirm with our tongues and lips that you are the perfect, visible image of the invisible God and that when we look upon you, we behold the fullness and totality of God. We realize and affirm that to know you Lord Jesus, is to know the Almighty, the one true Creator – He who was, is, and is to come.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are the firstborn of the entire cosmos, the first person to appear in creation and that you are preeminent in all of it. All things visible and invisible were created by you, through you, and for you. You are the Originator and the Goal – the Creator as well as the Consummator – the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end.
Lord Jesus Christ, you existed before time began as the eternal Son and you were before all things. The entire universe is held together in you and you are the cohesive force – the gravitational power that holds all created elements, seen and unseen, together. Without you, the entire universe would disintegrate.
It is you Dear Lord, the One True Light – Adonai – that gives meaning to all creation and all of life. Without you, there is no purpose, either universal or personal, for it is you Lord Jesus that rose higher than the highest heaven, filling all things with your presence and your purpose. You are indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Light –
We thank you for adopting us into your Family of Light and we commit our lives and our ways to you, your care, and your blessed Kingdom.
Left subclavian artery – The Anatomy of the Arteries Visual Guide, page 17 (of 57) (Photo credit: robswatski)
As I mentioned in the last update, I underwent an angiogram on August 2 and a significant blockage was found in my subclavian artery. This blockage was impairing bloodflow to one of my four bypass grafts (two of which are closed and cannot be opened). A third graft has a stent in place. As a result of this blockage, my only decent graft was only getting restricted bloodflow. The doctors attempted to place a stent, but were not successful.
In the meantime, I also had an ultrasound of my carotid artery done, which also revealed blockage. To cut to the chase, this coming Thursday, August 23, I will have an angioplasty on the subclavian blockage and this time they will go in through my left arm. The thinking is they will be able to place a stent in there from this angle. Later this fall, I will most likely have a separate operation to clear up the blockage in my carotid artery. Tests also reveal that I am getting reduced bloodflow to the brain, so if my writing seems even more erratic than normal, I have a decent excuse!
I am generally positive about all this and believe that once these blockages are cleared out, I should feel a bit better. Also on a positive note, my ejection fraction, although still quite low, has not had any further deterioration.
I would greatly appreciate any and all prayers, not only for myself, but for my wife Li and eight year old daughter, Salina. This is all quite stressful on the two of them as well. I will keep everyone posted as to progress.
As some of you know, my health has been a major life issue for some time now. I am afflicted with Severe Cardiovascular Disease and also Congestive Heart Failure. I had a quadruple bypass at age 47, back in 1996. Since that time, two of the grafts have closed and cannot be opened or stented. A third graft has a stent and the fourth one is fine. Over the last few months my angina has become more frequent. My systolic blood pressure in my right arm is some fifty points higher than in my left.
Yesterday, I underwent an angiogram and a blockage was found in my clavicular area, just below the left shoulder near the collar bone. Due to its location, which the doctor described as “tricky,” it was decided that a consult with a heart surgeon was needed. The doctors told me that they will either attempt to put a stent in the artery or a bypass graft around the blocked area. Much depends on what the surgeon suggests. Next Tuesday I am also scheduled for an ultrasound on my carotid artery, I suppose to see if there is any further complications in that area.
I mention all this to let my readers know what is going on and to request prayer. I am optimistic as to the outcome and in any case, I am at peace in the care of the God of All Comfort. I will try to keep up the blog as best I can through the next month, but if things are a little less regular, it is because I am dealing with these issues.
When the Master walked this earth, he did so as the prototype of a person who consistently walks in spiritual excellence. Jesus was the optimal version of who and what he was and it is to that goal we all aspire. Granted, we cannot walk as God’s Son walked – scripture tells us Jesus was the only one. However, we can walk as the optimal version of who we are. And when we do that, my friend, we are walking in spiritual excellence.
Jesus gave himself completely to the Father so that he could do the Father’s will completely. And what was the ultimate will of the Father for his Son? The answer is simple: serve others!
Like Christ, we, too, are to give ourselves completely to God so that we can do His will completely. And what is God’s ultimate will for us? It should be obvious by now: we are to serve others.
Our service is the offspring of a heart of compassion, built upon our deep recognition of the pain and suffering inherent in this world and our interconnected unity with all people. You may not know it yet, but every man on this planet is your brother and every woman is your sister. You are made of the same combination of earth and divine breath. When one person suffers, at some level, we all suffer. This is not some New Age airy fairy fantasy; instead, it is scientific fact and theological truth.
From his opening salvo quoting Isaiah about bringing release to the captives and good news to the poor, to his dying plea of, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus exemplified a compassion far beyond what the world had seen before.
Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Jesus’ stories about the Prodigal, the Good Samaritan, and his treatment of the woman caught in adultery all point to the need for a compassion that transcends the normal boundaries defined by contemporary culture, then and now.
Jesus Christ was not a man of compassion; he was a man of radical compassion. From his voluntary mission to this broken world, to his mysterious ascension back into the heavenly realm, there was no theme he stressed more in both word and deed. From his opening salvo quoting Isaiah about bringing release to the captives and good news to the poor, to his dying plea of, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus exemplified a compassion far beyond what the world had seen before. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Jesus’ stories about the Prodigal, the Good Samaritan, and his treatment of the woman caught in adultery all point to the need for a compassion that transcends the normal boundaries defined by contemporary culture, then and now. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Five-hundred years before Jesus, another prophet of radical compassion graced our world. Gautama Buddha was an example of grace and perfect love incarnate. After finding his awakening under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha went about spreading the truth that he had discovered, a truth that when astutely applied to life, could liberate beings from endless rounds of suffering. Just as with Jesus who would come later, Buddha taught through sermons, informal talks, parables, and above all, his actions.
Radical compassion is compassion with legs; radical compassion is a verb. Just as the Bible tells us in the Letter of James that faith without works is dead, also, compassion without concomitant action is a lifeless phenomenon. Many sincere aspirants have the mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is enlightenment. Although a sincere desire for motivation is one of our most treasured possessions, it is actually penultimate. The real aim of the spiritual journey is simply this – Sacred Service. All that we do is dedicated to the greatest good of all beings in all the worlds. Our gain is their gain, our loss is their loss, our advancement is their advancement, and it is to this sacred reality that we offer our benedictions at the end of our times of meditation and prayer.
In the Christian faith especially, personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of John.
Imagine for a moment that you are one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and you, your band of rag tag friends, and the Master arrive at the Upper Room after a long, tedious, dusty day going about your business. You sit for a moment to catch your breath and unwind a few moments before you go wash up for the evening meal. You close your eyes for a few minutes, only to feel something or someone taking off your sandals. And to your utter disbelief, kneeling in front of you is the Master Jesus with a basin and a towel. Incredible….
The Master taught his disciples, and all of us who have read of this amazing episode, a clear and concise example of the essence of spirituality: selfless service with a heart of humility. If only more of us, especially those who claim to be followers of Jesus, would take this lesson to heart, our world would have much less pain.
The Kingdom of God is a divine realm of proactive compassion. This is the message that Jesus came to deliver and through his actions as well as his words, he delivered it consistently. In all that he did and he said, Jesus revealed to us the nature of God. This incarnational revelation was hinted at in the Master’s magnificent prayer in John 17. In the 21st verse the Master says:
I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
In the Bible’s most well known verse, John 3:16, it is stated that for God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. (NLT)
Now, to make this even clearer, let’s look at one more verse in John 17. In verse three John records:
And this is the way to have eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. (NLT)
Putting all this together, Jesus gave us a powerful but very real theology in this prayer and his disciple, John, fully caught its significance by saying in 3:16 that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to save it. On God’s part, this was a perfect example of “proactive compassion” or what we often call “grace.” Motivated by the purest form of love, God was moved to have compassion on we fallen creatures, even in our blind ignorance, and he literally gave that compassion flesh by sending us the Master Jesus.
In order for compassion to become more than just a nice idea or a sentimental feeling, it must flow out of the internalized wisdom of the ages, particularly as related to the reality of “interconnectivity.” The idea of interconnectivity, now confirmed by the field of quantum physics, has been around for many centuries and is at the core of interspiritual mysticism, that one aspect of world religion that seems to transcend culture, time, and especially theology. It is a mystical connectedness that promotes compassion and engaged action to make the world a better place for all who dwell here. In essence, it is a deep wisdom that gives flesh to grace. The great spiritual writer Kahil Gibran spoke of this interconnected reality when he said:
Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down. Who knows but that your neighbor is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would yourself. He too is a manifestation of the Most High.
In India, for example, we have the story of Indra’s Net, which is strung throughout the universe with a precious jewel at the places where the cords of the net intersect. These jewels, in turn, reflect all of the other jewels. Similar to the modern discovery of the hologram, the image of Indra’s Net is filled with symbolic wisdom depicting the interconnectivity of all that is. Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book entitled, The Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us:
…the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics is that all things in our universe (including us) that appears to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.
In the Christian tradition, the writings of the great mystic teachers echo these same truths, often in symbolic and metaphorical ways. Julian of Norwich especially comes to mind as well as Hildegard of Bingen and Madame Guyon. The writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and the life and work of St. Francis also point to the interconnectivity of all life and the necessity of having a heart of radical compassion.
The great Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy B. Shelley have voices that ring loudly with the sense of the interrelated aspects of the natural world and their American counterparts, the Transcendentalists, in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, also echo this theme of divine connectivity. And then there is the work of that master of the arcane, William Blake who spoke of the mystic’s ability:
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
The world that we interact with each day only appears to be solid. In point of fact, it is an intricate dance of sub-atomic waves and particles that obey none of the traditional or expected moves of predictable choreography. At its core level, our apparently solid, material world is less like classical music and more like jazz. Just when we think we have a handle on how things are, these very things change, morphing into something totally unexpected and often totally mysterious. Someone wise, I forget who, once said the life is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived. How true, and the sooner a person grasps this fundamental truth, the less frustration will appear in his or her life.
It is not my intention to travel too far down this road of quantum physics at this juncture. Suffice to say that contemporary science is increasingly coming to grasp the same fundamental truths that mystics and shamans have voiced for many centuries. Simply put: Everything is interrelated and interdependent and when one part is affected by something, at a very core level, every other part is also impacted.
In teaching about the interrelated aspect of the universe, I often use a simple analogy that explains these principles in a basic way. I use the example of raisin Jell-o. Imagine you have concocted a delicious tub or raisin Jell-o. Choose your favorite flavor if you like. The raisins are the important thing, here. Now, what happens when you take your index finger and thump one of the raisins? All the raisins move. Crude as this metaphor is, it makes the point that all the raisins in the bowl are connected and if one raisin moves, they all move. This is what the mystics, and the quantum physicists, are talking about when they speak of interconnectivity.
Christian writer and teacher Elizabeth Elliot, looking at God’s wondrous creation with both attentiveness and wisdom, grasps the profundity of this theme of interconnectedness and how it illustrates a foundation of commonality between humans and other species in God’s creation:
The closer one comes to the center of things, the better able he is to observe the connections. Everything created is connected, for everything is produced by the same mind, the same love, and is dependent on the same Creator. He who masterminded the universe, the Lord God Omnipotent, is the One who called the stars into being, commanded light, spoke the Word that brought about the existence of time and space and every form of matter: salt and stone, rose and redwood, feather and fur and fin and flesh. The titmouse and the turkey answer to Him. The sheep, the pig, and the finch are His, at His disposal, possessed and known by Him…We too are created, owned, possessed, known.
As the church moves into the second decade of the 21st Century it has already become apparent that great changes are in the wind. I feel some of these changes are connected with an increased understanding of how God’s magnificent creation is put together in this incredible holographic manner in which each part contains the totality of the whole and every aspect of his world exists in an interdependent relationship with every other part. This is no romantic sentimentalism I am speaking of. Instead, it is a living, vibrant reality that, when one takes it to heart, changes everything. For the church, the message of the gospel become less of “let me show you the way,” and more of “What do you need?”
This move toward proactive compassion is a move of grace. Perhaps you are not accustomed to looking at grace that way, but grace is what we are dealing with. As stated earlier, a major part of Christ’s incarnation and our ongoing mission is to give flesh to grace. Caroline Myss makes this cogent observation in her book, Invisible Acts of Power:
What really happens inside you when you respond to someone in need? Why do some people jump out of their seats to help another person, while others look the other way? No doubt, some people have been taught to be kind and others may be naturally thoughtful. But I think something greater than compassion or good manners is at work, something beyond the motivation of the strong to help the weak or the wealthy to help the poor. I think it is the invisible power of grace, moving between the open hearts of give and receiver. The action itself, the lifting of a heavy piece of luggage or the drink of water offered to the thirsty man, may be small. But the energy that is channeled through that action is the high-voltage current of grace. It contains the power to renew someone’s faith in himself. It even has the power to save a life.
It should not be too difficult of an intellectual jump to see why this concept of interrelated reality should lead to a true and radical sense of compassion. What happens to me in the ultimate sense, happens to you and vice versa. When a child dies of hunger or disease in a poverty stricken nation, some part of each of us dies. We may not feel it, understand it, or even recognize it. Still, it is a fundamental spiritual and quantum truth. It is wise to remember the words of the 17th Century poet John Donne as he spoke of the custom of the time which involved ringing the town’s bell whenever someone died:
Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind;
Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Stained glass window of the sacred Heart of Jesus Christ in the former Mosque (Cathedral) of Cordoba, Spain (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
LifeBrook 