Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book “New Seeds of Contemplation” by Thomas Merton.

Today I pray, “Dear God, It’s the holiday season! Last year’s December was my first year writing in this medium. I think I maaaayyy have… gotten a little sentimental around this time of year. A lot has happened since then. Jesus has since visited me. On multiple occasions. And I guess, for me, that changes a person. The way I think of Jesus is different now. Not better. Not worse. Not more enlightened. Not more specialer…er. I only think of Jesus in a way that reflects my own personal experience, having had the extraordinary moments of sitting with Jesus. And thinking of His birth, His story, His Purpose, His Mission, His life… It all seems different to me now. In the “a personal relationship” sort of way. It has been a transformation of my Christianity. And I am honored to be a part of it. Amen.”

Following my prayer, I held the closed book in my hands and opened it to reveal this passage:

“We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.”
—THOMAS MERTON

I accept the experiences I have had with Yeshua, Jesus, this past year. I can hold it in my own serene happiness, my silent reverence for the experience. There is no need to go beyond this in a fulfillment of expression of it. For it was the experience itself that served its infinite richness. It has been all that I can retain to know that my experience with Yeshua has taken place. As He had nothing to prove, only to show, my receiving of His presence was all that is needed to be provided here. And I continue to count it as a serene blessing, an innocent balance, and a desired relationship.