Wisdom Wednesday: Celebration of Discipline, Final

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions and church news. During this season of Lent, we at Peakland have been reading this book, Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. Over the past five weeks, we at Peakland have read about the spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation, Fasting and Study, Simplicity and Solitude, submission and service, worship and confession.

This is my third or fourth time reading this book with a congregation. I think I first read Celebration of Discipline 20 years ago, a few years after the start of my professional United Methodist ministry, and each time I read it again with folks, something new pops out for me.

My biggest takeaways from this season with Celebration of Discipline is that we’re not to just read about these disciplines and discuss them and consider them, we really do need to practice these disciplines. That’s probably obvious to most people, but I felt challenged this season into trying the disciplines I don’t usually do and finding new ways of doing the disciplines I almost always do.

This go around, I was taken with the palms up and palms down prayer posture that Foster describes in the prayer chapter. His religious background is with the Quaker community and this is a Quaker form of prayer. Palms turned over and facing down when we want to turn over our fears and anxieties and concerns to the Lord. By turning them over to God, we let God take them and make a new way for us. With palms up, we open ourselves to listen and learn and receive from God. This Lent, I’ve been using the palms up and palms down in Sunday worship, with the staff during our prayer time together, and in my own devotions.

As I said this past Sunday during worship, fasting from meals has never been a strong discipline for me, and John Wesley would not approve of my negligence there, but I this Lent I experimented with fasting from screen time and instead used the time reading from actual books, which I found most fulfilling.

My hope for myself and for all of us is that we keep up with these disciplines beyond Lent. My hope for all of us is that prayer and meditation, service and worship, fasting and confession and all the other disciplines become not just good habits that we do, but a way of life. Confession isn’t just a single prayer on Sunday morning. Instead, we live ready to ask forgiveness and to offer forgiveness and to seek reconciliation all the time. Worship is not just confined to a single hour on Sunday, but we live each day, aware of God’s amazing grace shining on us. Service isn’t just something we do when it’s convenient for us to do but we stand ready to respond with help when and where we are needed. Prayer and meditation, speaking and listening to God is ongoing and as regular as eating and drinking and walking and breathing. Even fasting and submission and the disciplines we each struggle with, we take small steps and see what God reveals to us.
I have been deeply blessed this Lenten season with Richard Foster and with you.

Next Sunday, April 2 is Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. Peakland will worship next Sunday as a united congregation in a single worship service at 9:45 in the sanctuary. We’ll gather in person in the sanctuary and will also livestream the service.

Peakland gathers for worship on Thursday April 6 at 7:00 p.m. for our Maundy Thursday worship and Friday, April 7 at 7:00 p.m. for Good Friday. Both of those services will be in person only.

And then on Easter Sunday, April 9, we have three plus one worship services.
We’ll worship at our three usual times and in our usual places 8:30, 11:00 in the sanctuary and 9:45 Horizons worship. The 11:00 a.m. Easter worship will be livestreamed.

We’ll also gather for a sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. on Easter Sunday, April 9.