Last Sunday Stephen started our summer series called “The Path” exploring who God is. As we journey along this path of examining key attributes of God’s character, our prayer is that we will encounter the God who is deeply good, nurturing, creative, safe, beautiful, persistent, merciful, abundant, comforting, kind, fun and playful, sufficient, and loving in our own everyday lives. Throughout this series, the newsletter will introduce each week’s characteristic of God along with invitations to practice experiencing this aspect of God.
Tomorrow we’ll be studying the “nurturing” attribute of God. By this, I mean: God provides for our needs in a tender and caring way that empowers our healthy growth and development.
I want you to read that definition slowly a few more times. It may be different than how you’ve thought about or experienced God in the past. That’s okay. See if you can simply notice what arises in you as you read without trying to “figure out” what it could mean or what to “do” with it.
Ask yourself:
- What sticks out to me?
- Are there any words, phrases, or ideas that especially draw me in?
- Does anything feel like it doesn’t align with my experience of God?
For many of us, we often know God is nurturing in a cognitive way, but we may not have had much practice (or permission) to explore God’s nurturing in a personal way before. Yet nurture is one of those traits we can’t just know about, we need to encounter it for ourselves.
As we seek to experience God’s nurture, here are a few practices I invite you to consider this week:
- Go verse-by-verse through The Message paraphrase of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 6:25-34. Slowly sit with each verse, letting God’s truth marinate as you consider what Jesus’ words mean for both who God is and how God personally nurtures you.
- At the end of each day, ask yourself: “How did I experience God’s tender, caring provision today?” Another way of saying this: “how did I feel seen or held by God today?” (Pro tip: This is a really beautiful question to hold as you’re getting ready to go to sleep!)
- Consider practicing this with any children in your life. I love to ask my kids a version of this question at night when I’m putting them to bed: “How did you feel God’s big love for you today” or “When did you experience God’s kind presence with you in your day today?”
- Another fun exercise personally, communally, and with children is to write the answers to these questions down to create your own ebenezer, a tangible marker of God’s faithful, nurturing provision that can be shared and returned to. Paper in a box or jar, a special notebook, a cairn of rocks – the opportunities are endless.
Can’t wait to get into all this and much more tomorrow!
Ally