MEDITATION:
Written by John Ortberg, a contemporary author, speaker, and former pastor. This is an excerpt from his book “The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You.”
God made you to flourish—to receive life from outside yourself, creating vitality within yourself and producing blessing beyond yourself. Flourishing is God’s gift and plan, and when you flourish you are in harmony with God, other people, creation, and yourself. Flourishing is not measured by outward signs such as income, possessions, or attractiveness. It means becoming the person He had in mind in creating you. Flourishing means moving toward God’s best version of you. As God helps you grow, you will change, but you will always be you. An acorn can grow into an oak tree, but it cannot become a rose bush. It can be a healthy oak or it can be a stunted oak—but it won’t be a shrub. You will always be you—a growing, healthy you or a languishing you—but God did not create you to be anybody else. He pre-wired your temperament. He determined your natural gifts and talents. He made you feel certain passions and desires. He planned your body and mind. Your uniqueness is God-designed. Some people think that if they seek to grow spiritually, they will have to become someone else. But God won’t discard your raw material. He redirects it. Before Paul met Jesus, he was a brilliant, passionate zealot who persecuted people. Afterward, he was a brilliant passionate zealot who sacrificed himself for people…God doesn’t make anything and then decide to throw it away. He creates and then if there is a problem, he rescues…Here is the good news: When you flourish, you become more you. You become more that person God had in mind when he thought you up. You don’t just become holier. You become you-ier. You will change; God wants you to become a “new creation.” But “new” doesn’t mean completely different; instead, it’s like an old piece of furniture that gets restored to its intended beauty.
PRAYER:
From the Mozarabic Breviary, a liturgical rite of the Latin Church once used in the Iberian Peninsula in what is now Spain and Portugal. Developed during Visigoth rule in the 500s.
O Lord,
make us flourish like pure lilies
in the courts of your house,
and make us display to your people
the fragrance of good works
and the example of a godly life;
through your mercy, O our God,
you are blessed,
and live and govern all things, now and forever. Amen.
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