Prayer Walking Playlists - An Easter Gift from me.

The most significant four days of the year. If the busyness of life has kept you from dialing in to the significance of these next few days in our calendar year, this email is an invitation to remember! It's Thursday of the Passion Week. The night Jesus had his last meal with his friends. My favorite section of the whole Bible is what he did and had to say to them that night. John chapter 17 is the best! Jim is thinking the same things today. An hour ago I popped in on him where he was working, with a "What's up?" and he'd read this to me. It's too good not to share with you as we head into the weekend! These few days changed EVERYTHING.  "...not for people to go to heaven but for people to discover that God's new world has begun, and we can be part of it.  I hope it is now clear why the reurrection of Jesus is so central and vital -- as Paul insists again and again, especially in 1 Corinthians 15:17. 'If the Messiah wasnt raised,' he writes, 'your faith is pointless, and you are still in your sins.' If the Messiah is not raised, the covenant is not renewed, creation is not renewed, and...he is not even Messiah in the first place.... He was inaugurating a whole new world, a new creation, a new way of being human. He was forging a way into a new cosmos, a new era, a form of existence hinted at all along but never before unveiled. 'Here it is,' he was saying. 'This is the new creation you've been waiting for. It is open for business.'" N.T. Wright Simply Good News, p 100-1. (I loved this so much, I made a recording for you of the whole devotional and put in dropbox here.)

Ramadan 2023, Gillian Ferwerda

My new friend in the Maker's Space* has prayed for the Muslim world during Ramadan. Gillian wrote this as she prayed. Used with permission.

The fasting hunger -

Like empty spaces

Between ladder rungs;

You cannot place feet

Where there is nothing.

See the Son of Man:

Fullness of God and

Fullness of mankind,

Flesh of your own flesh;

Who knows your hunger

But fills all in all;

Who opened wide the

Heavens and now stands,

Stands high your Ladder.

On him the angels

Ascend and descend.

On him and in him

You are invited

To heaven’s fullness.

Let him take your feet

And carry you high.

(April 2023)

*The Makers Space is a private FB group that is growing out of what was an artist group meeting to practice creativity with activating prayer. There is now a small Novo Mission team from that original group for whom this is no longer our "side-hustle" ministry, but the main focus of what we do full time. Where we have our boots on the ground, and serving other mission teams in need of some creative juice. If you are interested in perhaps joining our Makers FB group which meets by zoom on the 3rd Thursday of the month, contact me!