the christian calendar on Stillness

Lord Jesus, Master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are an...

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. God has died in the flesh and hell trem...

A Digital Silent Retreat This spiritual exercise is from Laura Murray, ordained pastor, spiritual director, and TPW contributor. Laura is sharing a "Digital Silent Retreat" with us. We en...

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still becau...

Dear Heavenly Father, We confess that we have not sat quietly with You and listened for Your voice Through the hustle of Christmastime and navigating our world, we have given up the quiet space alloca...

God, you come to us and meet us in the strangest ways: sometimes in the stillness at the eye of the storm or in the midnight of our lives; sometimes in the raging whirlwind or in the high noon of our ...

"Maundy" What? Maundy Thursday takes its name from the Latin version of John 13:34: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are ...

Pastor: Gracious God, with joy and thanksgiving we gather as Your people to ponder anew the timeless story of Christ’s birth. For at just the right time, You worked in the most unlikely ways to fulf...

In our prayers this morning, when I say, “Lord of all glory,” please respond by saying “Hear our prayer”. Lord of all glory... hear our prayer . Our God speaks tenderly to His people and cares for th...

Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the ver...

In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to lis...

…How still the Landscape stands! How nonchalant the hedge! As if the “Resurrection” Were nothing very strange!

Every Holy Saturday, the Church waits as it were beside the tomb, meditating on Christ's death while awaiting the announcement of his resurrection. Like John, we can take Mary into our homes and p...

Moonless darkness stands between. Past, the Past, no more be seen! But the Bethlehem-star may lead me To the sight of Him Who freed me From the self that I have been. Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy...

The Holy Saturday moment: when all seems dark & grim and the only thing left to do is wait...on the Lord for tomorrow morning's hope is risen.

Before we get to Easter, we need to linger: in the vulnerability of the basin and the towel at the remembrance and promise of the table in the struggle and betrayal of the garden in the shadows and sh...

The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you ...

“God is doing a new thing.” —Isaiah 43 I have heard this scripture passage quoted multiple times in the last three years and it still stirs something within me. Do you feel it too? God is doing ...

One of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along, that while we need to be reassured of God’s arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already a...

There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless an...

On Holy Saturday I do my best to live in that place, that wax-crayon place of trust and waiting. Of accepting what I cannot know. Of mourning what needs to be mourned. Of accepting what needs to be ac...

There are so many things we do not understand⁠ So many ways we long for change and closure⁠ Help us to trust you⁠ even when the situation is desperate and out of control⁠ Help us to follow you⁠ even...

What self denial! What self abasement! What self emptying! He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within infant’s age, and infant’s form. Can it be, that the great ‘I AM THAT I AM’ shrinks int...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and eve...

Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.

Amazed, bewildered, they are gathered around him, whose pondered resolution comes to rest, withdrawing him from all the ties that bound him--a stranger gliding by with thoughts unguessed. He feels tha...

As you continue in this season of waiting, may your waiting refine you. May you grow in the likeness of Jesus each day while we await his return. And may the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus ...

I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not nigh:a star shall come out of jacob. Numbers 24:17 KSV No star is visible except at night, Until the sun goes down, no accurate north. Da...

In the midst of frenzied shopping and end-of-year weariness, we spread out a purple cloth,(a purple cloth is spread over the communion table) read again the ancient stories,(a Bible is placed on th...

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory. Let me lear...