The woman leading a group...
Illustration
The woman leading a group of seminary students on a weekend retreat asked them to meditate on the question, "What will it cost me if I follow Jesus?" She told the seminarians to be specific in their answers. Absolutely anyone could say, "It will cost me my life." That was perhaps a way of saying everything at once, but it was also a way of saying nothing at all. Crosses have their own individual shape, the leader said, their own particular knots where they bite into the flesh of our lives.
She invited the students to reflect for two hours in silence, walking about, journaling, or just sitting and reflecting, however they wished. At the end of that time they would place their answers, no names attached, in simply written sentences beside the leader's open Bible.
The students gathered quietly at the end of the time of meditation. With sensitivity, the leader read the "costs" and then all joined in prayer for the struggles ... struggles with lust ... with pride in a quick mind ... with the desires for a big church, for control over the future, for a well-known name. They prayed over impatience, over the wish to possess all the answers, over the habit of speaking too much and listening too little.
When finished, the students retired in silence for the night, uplifted by prayer, but also deepened in their sense of the cost, the stunningly personal cost, of discipleship.
She invited the students to reflect for two hours in silence, walking about, journaling, or just sitting and reflecting, however they wished. At the end of that time they would place their answers, no names attached, in simply written sentences beside the leader's open Bible.
The students gathered quietly at the end of the time of meditation. With sensitivity, the leader read the "costs" and then all joined in prayer for the struggles ... struggles with lust ... with pride in a quick mind ... with the desires for a big church, for control over the future, for a well-known name. They prayed over impatience, over the wish to possess all the answers, over the habit of speaking too much and listening too little.
When finished, the students retired in silence for the night, uplifted by prayer, but also deepened in their sense of the cost, the stunningly personal cost, of discipleship.
