# Grasping day 2 > Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God. ### Opening Prayer: *Lord Jesus, forgive me when my bleeding and wounded heart causes me to grasp for life and relief from any and every source available. Instead, help me to reach only for you—that I might touch the fringe of your robe and find healing and wholeness for the brokenness of my heart and soul. In Your Name I pray. Amen. (JLB)* #### Psalm for the Week: Psalm 16 #### You Will Not Abandon My Soul #### A Miktam[a] of David. *16 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;I have no good apart from you.”3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,in whom is all my delight.[b]4 The sorrows of those who run after[c] another god shall multiply;their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.* *7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.[d]8 I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being[e] rejoices;my flesh also dwells secure.* *10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.[f]* *11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy;at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.* #### Scripture for the Day: Mark 10:17-31 #### The Rich Young Man *17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.* *23 And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is[a] to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him,[b] “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” 28 Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” 29 Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”* #### Reading for Reflection: *Greed is often associated with a ravenous appetite that devours anything within reach—a noisy, uncouth vice. Yet it is more often known in the quietly insistent urge that nudges us from wanting to “needing,” then to grasping what we now “need” so others cannot deprive us of it. Jesus addressed this grasping, clinging mind when he counseled that we cannot serve God and mammon, and Aramaic word denoting ill-gotten gain (Matthew 6:24).* ​ *“In your minds you must be the same as Jesus Christ: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God…” (Phil.2:6, JB). The spiritual life is one in which we grow out of the grasping, clinging mind into the mind of Christ. The Christ-mind releases us from our compulsion to associate personal worth with what we have accumulated, taming what nineteenth-century professor Adolphe Gratry calls “the exuberant desire to rise by a borrowed power.” (Editor’s Introduction by John S. Mogabgab, Weavings, November/ December 2005)* #### Reflection and Listening: silent and written #### Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself #### Song for the Week: Tender Mercy *Hear my cry for mercy* *As I call to You* *As I lift my hands in Spirit* *And in Truth* *We cry mercy* *(in the name of the Father most Holy)* *We cry mercy* *(in the name of the Son Who was slain)* *Lord have mercy* *(in the name of the Spirit indwelling)* *Tender mercy Lord* *You are mercy (in the name of the Father most Holy)* *You are mercy (in the name of the Son Who was slain)* *Lord have mercy (in the name of the Spirit indwelling)* *Tender mercy Lord* *In Your tender mercy* *Brought by grace through faith* *I will lift my heart* *Toward Your most Holy place* ### Closing Prayer: *Lord Jesus, give me the grace and the strength and the courage to take off that which I use to cover myself; and to clothe myself only and always in you alone. Amen. (JLB)*