This past week, a group of us began working through Scot McKnight's book 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. We're posting our thoughts on the book on a Facebook group, which forces me to really think about what I'm reading and how it applies.

For me, the idea of the Jesus Creed and praying it throughout the day isn't much of a stretch. Through the contemplative practices, I've become accustomed to praying the Jesus Prayer or other breath prayers on a consistent basis. However, I found that the Scripture from Mark was just a bit too familiar, and it quickly became a repetition of words without real meaning for me. I turned to the Message instead and created a combination of the two versions that is more thought-provoking for me. I've been using this:Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. So love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy. Love others as well as you love yourself. There is no other commandment that ranks with these.After getting my version straight, I jumped in. Day 2 was no problem for me, though it gave me an opportunity to journal and to check on where things are in my life. I liked the reminder that to love God means to yearn for, to pray for, and work for what glorifies God and what puts God in God's place in your life (8). I thought I was cruising along and getting the hang of this.Then I hit Day 3. With the recent events of my life, loving others has been somewhat selective. I've found myself praying a line from Kendall Payne's song "Prayer" - What you do unto others, may it all be done to you - when thinking about my former employers and their political ambitions. Somehow that just didn't seem to fit into the concept of loving your neighbor - at least not in this case. So I seemed to have gotten stuck on this particular concept and how it plays out in my current situation.I started thinking about the needs that my former employers have. I discovered that what they perceive as needs are simply ambitions or desires. They need to be popular, to be promoted, to be in control - those are all their personal desires. On the 2 hour drive to my folks' place, I prayerfully considered what their true needs might be. I felt like I was consistently being led back to "love others as well as yourself," and I began to realize that Bill, Kristen and Cathy are all striving to gain others' approval and others' love rather than being able to love themselves. All three of them have spent their entire lives doing what pleases others and being whoever they needed to be to please the person who could promote them. This is especially true as they are in positions to be promoted in the next 6 months. Everything they do - including firing me - is an attempt to get someone else to love them. They don't see themselves as the beloved of God; they see themselves as little worker bees for the church. It's all about doing, pleasing and earning love, including God's love.With that sense, I actually began to feel sorry for them. I remember what it was like to be trapped in that never-ending cycle. I am so grateful for my friend Larry who helped me to believe that I am the beloved of God and that being is way more important than doing! Once you are able to "be", the doing becomes the natural outflow of all that you receive.Looking at Day 4 then, this caught my attention: "For us to be empowered by that face, we have to turn our face to God by gazing at God and by talking to God. If we fake it, we offer to God nothing but a facade. If we face God honestly by offering our true face to God, we discover in the face of God the face of love. We discover that God is love." (22)That struck me because of the facade I see my former employers and others around me (and at times myself) putting before God. I have had the terrifying experience of finding myself naked and true before the face of God and finding only love despite my own fear and shame. Although it is never a pleasant experience (at least to start), it is a rewarding, humbling and encouraging experience. My prayer for my former employers has become simply that the facade would crumble and that they would not run from the presence of God in those first difficult moments, but that they would have the courage to stay and experience true love.