October 2024

The following is a possible framework for the Witnessing of the Word. It can be personalised or altered: its purpose is to serve as an example of how this Saying might be used primarily in the context of a Prayer Group, but it may be used by individuals too. It is not intended to be definitive.  In the context of a group: the periods of silence should be appropriate for your group - probably not less than 5 minutes, or more than 15 minutes.

Saying for the month: ‘I am God ... the Holy One in your midst’.  Hosea 11.9. (RSV)

To begin the exercise, first spend a short while in relaxation and preparing to be still; you may want to relax your way through your muscles or you may find it helpful to become aware of the sounds around you and then put them aside as you offer this time of prayer to God.

Say this introductory invitation to prayer, then keep a further minute or two of silence: ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11.28).

Introduction to the first silence - a preparation for listening with the mind:

‘I am God … the Holy One in your midst’.

Hosea was God’s prophet in one of the most turbulent times of Israel’s history.  The worship of Baal was paramount and the Israelites were living corrupt and faithless lives. They were told they had ‘multiplied altars for sinning’, they were ‘adulterers’ and had become ‘useless vessels’. They had turned their backs on God and forgotten that He loved them unconditionally. Hosea had a difficult mission to bring them back to God.

When idols take up too much space in our hearts, we can neglect our relationship with God, who remains faithful even in the midst of our unfaithfulness, and continually calls us back in love. Hosea was a Hebrew prophet who was highly critical of ongoing idolatry and unfaithfulness to God. Wanting to ensure that their families and their fields were sufficiently fertile, the Israelites had taken to offering sacrifices to Baal, a tribal fertility god whose popularity was on the rise during Hosea’s life. This was a regarded as a betrayal of Israel’s covenant with God who had clearly commanded them to worship no other gods. Hosea tried to convince the people that God would not tolerate their behaviour. He used his own fractured family as an allegory for the strained relationship between God and his people.  

Hosea’s description of God’s response to the people’s continuing idolatry is striking.   In Chapter 11 God describes his heartache as that of a parent whose children have betrayed their relationship. God is like a fiercely protective father, remembering how he held his children’s hands as they learned to walk, lamenting that the children have now rejected his care. God is also like a tender mother, reaching down to feed her children keeping them safe at every moment, grieving that her children have now forgotten that it was she who originally sustained and raised them.   

These tender words describe a God who is devastated by the people’s unfaithfulness for, as He says: ‘I could never give up on my children, I could never destroy them’. This is not a God of death, destruction and punishment but a God of life and forgiveness, a God who has wrestled with the reality of human brokenness and has determined in the face of it to remain a force of grace and healing.

No matter how far from God we may feel we have become, He will guide us all home. God’s faithfulness is not like the faithfulness of humans; it never wavers. God never leaves us. The words of October’s Saying remind us of this: ‘I am God, the Holy One in your midst’. He is ever-present and never-changing. He always desires a deeper relationship with us and continually draws us back to Him. This month’s Saying shows us a God that is constantly reassuring His people then, and now, that no matter what, and particularly in times of suffering and difficulty, He is always in our midst, guiding us, keeping us, and loving us. 

So, we now listen to God’s Words, perhaps imagining them being spoken to us as they were first spoken to the Israelites long ago, telling them of His love that endures for ever.

We take this Saying into our minds, allowing it to speak to us: ‘I am God … the Holy One in your midst’.

A time is now kept for silence of the mind – perhaps between 5 and 15 minutes.  The silence concludes with a short thanksgiving, and/or feel free to repeat the Saying.

The first silence ends with the words: Father, we thank you for the gift of your Word.

Introduction to the second silence - a preparation for listening with the heart:

‘I am God … the Holy One in your midst’.

In Matthew’s gospel, there are the familiar words ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in your midst’ (Matthew 8.20). These words give us the immediate assurance of God’s presence with us through the Holy Spirit.   However, it becomes very clear when we read the New Testament, especially St. John’s gospel, that God is not only in our midst but actually dwells within us, in the very centre of our being.

This concept of God and Christ living in us, is referred to in the Bible several times. In John 14.20; Jesus says ‘In that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in Me and I am in you’. In the parable of the Vine, John 15.5, Jesus tells His disciples ‘I am the Vine and you are the branches … therefore dwell in Me as I dwell in you’. St Paul also speaks of this indwelling; in his first letter to the Corinthians, when he says ‘Do you not realise that you are the Temple of the Living God, and God’s Spirit dwells in you’ (1 Cor 3.16). So, we are assured that God, through the Spirit, dwells in you and I, and indeed in all people.

Somehow, although we perhaps know this with our minds, it is our habit to think that we are here and God is ‘out there’. But it is transforming when we realise that God is not remote or separate from us. The Fellowship of Contemplative Prayer’s method of prayer emphasises this when in the silence, we receive His Words of Spirit and Life into our mind, heart and will.  God is living not just in our midst but within each of us. We believe this when we say the Fellowship’s thanksgiving prayer, which we might say at the end of this session: ‘and so we offer to you, in so far as we are able, as an emptiness to be filled by your divine fullness, ourselves, our souls and bodies; all that we are, all that we have and all that we do’.

The fourteenth century anchorite and mystic, Julian of Norwich expresses her own experience of the Divine Indwelling. In her book The Revelations of Divine Love, she writes:

The place that Jesus takes in our soul he will never vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the greatest delight for him to dwell there … and the soul who thus contemplates this is made like the One who is contemplated.   

We are living in a world that is fractured and being torn apart by war and suffering, and we see the frightening effects of global warming. We see acts of violence and cruelty on our television sets almost on a daily basis. Some of us might be tempted to ask ‘How can God be in our midst?’ or ‘How can God allow this?’.

God gives us free will, a precious gift, which means that we have a choice of how we live and what we do. At the same time, God suffers with all who are suffering in all situations; in war zones, areas where there is hunger, homelessness, and poverty. It is precisely at such moments that He, as Hosea says, dwells in our midst. Despite everything, He dwells with us and gives to His people His comfort and love. It can be part of our daily intercession to hold in prayer all who suffer. So let us now receive these Words of God in our hearts and allow them to sink down into the very depths of our being, God says to us ‘I am God … the Holy One in your midst’.

A time is now kept for silence of the heart – perhaps between 5 and 15 minutes.

The second silence ends with the words: Father, we thank you that your Word is alive and within us.

Introduction to the time of intercession – taking God’s word outwards into the world.

‘I am God … the Holy One in your midst’.

In the third and final section of this reflection we draw this month’s Saying outwards into the world as we make Hosea’s words relevant to whomever we feel called by God to name aloud or to whomever is held quietly in the silence of our hearts.   

Say the name of a person or a group of people, and after a short pause, repeat the saying. For example:

‘Alison and your family: “I am God … the Holy One in your midst” ’.

As we allow the word to speak through us we might direct Jesus’ word towards those people and situations where there is suffering, hurt and an absence of joy and where abiding in Christ would bring comfort.

Conclude this time of intercession with words of thanksgiving: Father, we thank you that your Word has gone out through us to those for whom we pray.

The Conclusion

Feel free to use the Fellowship Prayer (below) or another closing prayer to conclude your time of contemplative prayer:

Loving Heavenly Father, we thank you for all your unsearchable riches which pour forth from you as light from the sun, in boundless profusion and generosity, whether received, ignored or rejected. And now we offer to you, in so far as we are able, as an emptiness to be filled with your divine fullness, ourselves, our souls and bodies; all that we are, all that we have and all that we do. Amen

You may wish to say the Grace together before departing.