the god lab – share | ground

Here’s some more beatitudes from the book we are looking at in one of our house groups:

share:

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Here we are encouraged to think about the things we mourn for, and bring them to God.  In laying out of our stall before God and sharing our sufferings with him, we can hope to find comfort in him.  In the book, this is turned into an experiment:

Find a quiet place and talk to God about anything that concerns you.
Share your thoughts with God and sculpt them into requests.
At the end you may conclude by thanking God for listening.

Put as simply as this it may sound too simple or naive, but this isn’t the whole of our conversations with God. But perhaps it is also not a bad place to start.

 

ground:

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

The word grounded is chosen here, over meek, and although it isn’t a perfect translation, it gets away from the traditional view of meekness that perhaps makes us think of weakness.  Instead we think more of humility, gentleness, presence. It’s more about keeping out feet on the ground in the here and now.  Only in the here-and-now can we be loved, only here can we be loved. So in this experiment we are encouraged to attend to our current experience of whatever we are doing.

experiment:
Find a quiet place.
Focus on your senses and decide to be present in the here-and-now.
Adopt a prayerful gratitude to the world around you.

In this experiment, we may find that out of the being in the here-and-now leads to thoughts about what we need to do. Perhaps these are the moments where the meek (or the grounded) shall inherit the earth.