Dear Kaleid Ladies,
What is the warmest welcome you’ve ever received? Take yourself back to a time when you entered a place and felt the warmth of welcome. Perhaps the force of that welcome took you by surprise.
What did your body experience? What about your spirit? How did you take in the warmth of that welcome as you relaxed into it? What happened inside of you that day?
Now take that memory with you as you consider the possibility of divine welcome.
“Love has its origins in the character of the triune God, where perfect love is shared within a sacred community of three. And love, by its very nature always reaches out. Rather than be content with the circle of love within the Godhead, God reached out to create so that others could enter this sphere of intimacy and be warmed by divine love.”
- David Benner, Surrender to Love, p. 25
The very act of your creation was an act of divine welcome, meant to draw you into the warmth of divine love--your true home. When Jesus came, he revealed God’s heart for the world. Jesus revealed all of God. As one theologian says, “there is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ.” Jesus is God, and Jesus comes to show us the whole heart of God. A heart of loving, radical welcome.
For the next few weeks, we are going to share the prayer practices from our contemplative mornings with you so that you can practice entering into divine welcome, that place where love meets fear and fear can relax into trust.
This week, we offer an imaginative prayer practice that draws us into the story of Jesus’ welcoming of the little children. We hope you’ll take a few minutes to sit with the story and the questions and allow the Holy Spirit to calm your fears and draw your heart into the warmth, acceptance, and kindness of divine love
Friend, think about this and let it settle on you: If you’d been there....if you had been one of those children, Jesus would have looked on you with that same fierce kindness and he would have drawn you to himself. He would have affirmed to every skeptic around you that the Kingdom of God is filled up with ones just like you.
Today, may the childlike and childish parts of our hearts find their home in his presence today. May they relax into divine welcome and remember that they can trust because they are loved.
Blessings,
The Kaleid Team
P.S. We have one more week in this free contemplative series, When Love Meets Fear, and you’re welcome to join us next Wednesday morning from 6:30 - 7:15 on zoom. Register here!
AND! We are still registering folks for our community-building Kaleid Foundations Circle, which is our signature offering; for our new Discernment Circle “Embracing the Shifts,” where we will pause once a month to listen and respond where God is leading; and for our short, bold, deep dive into Power, Patriarchy, Women, and the Church. Join us!