Gifts

Use this scripture reading, reflection, song, and closing prayer, to have a Koinonia session that invites you to LOOK WITHIN at the GIFTS you have to OFFER.

SCRIPTURE… Luke 21:1-4
He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”


REFLECTION… by Donal Harrington and Julie Kavanagh
God has given to each of us the most precious gift—more precious even than the great pearl in the field. It is a gift that remains unopened until we reach deep within ourselves and begin to embrace it. As a gift from God it does not hold the same limits as our human understanding. It is, indeed, difficult to image its height and its depth, its length and its breadth. But it is within us, at the very heart of who we are, present from the first moment of the Spirit’s breath moving through our being. How sad it would be to reach our final moments and realized that we have never tasted of our gift, that we were too afraid to reach in and accept what God has given us from our first moment of life. How sad it would be to arrive at the end of our journey having never fully lived, having never broken open for the world the treasure within us—the pearl in each of our hearts, the coin of the widow.



SONG… The Pearl by Emmylou Harris
O the dragons are gonna fly tonight
They're circling low and inside tonight
It's another round in the losing fight
Out along the great divide tonight
We are aging soldiers in an ancient war
Seeking out some half remembered shore
We drink our fill and still we thirst for more
Asking if there's no heaven what is this hunger for?
Our path is worn our feet are poorly shod
We lift up our prayer against the odds
And fear the silence is the voice of God, of God
And we cry Allelujah, Allelujah, We cry Allelujah
Sorrow is constant and the joys are brief
The seasons come and bring no sweet relief
Time is a brutal but a careless thief
Who takes our lot but leaves behind the grief
It is the heart that kills us in the end
Just one more old broken bone that cannot mend
As it was now and ever shall be amen
And we cry Allelujah, Allelujah, We cry Allelujah
So there'll be no guiding light for you and me
We are not sailors lost out on the sea
We were always headed toward eternity
Hoping for a glimpse of Galilee
Like falling stars from the universe we are hurled
Down through the long loneliness of the world
Until we behold the pain become the pearl, the pearl
Cryin´ Allelujah, Allelujah, We cry Allelujah
And we cry Allelujah Allelujah, We cry Allelujah


CLOSING PRAYER… by Donal Harrington and Julie Kavanagh
Blessed be the Lord, source of our inner voice,
in whose grace we listen to ourselves,
in whose wisdom we discover what we have to give,
in whose courage we come to dare,
in whose protection we learn to trust,
in whose giving we learn to yield,
in whose living we learn to die,
in whose dying we learn to live.
Amen.