Contemplative Night

Last night we had a contemplative night at Living Room, where each of us spent time during the meeting in silence doing various things. There were newspaper, many different books, candles, list of illustrations, Bibles of different translations, postcards, notepads, even cushions and pillows etc.

Each of us went through a kind of a journey, where we just picked some or all of these things to engage in. I went through the followings in order:

• skimming through Operation China by Paul Hattaway (of special interest was the Uygur people group), then Lonely Planet Western Europe (of special interest was London)
• gazing at the candles and reflecting on Jesus as the light of the world, and spending time in prayers
• going through the list of illustrations, and really enjoyed a picture which shows that creativity is a divine spark
• reflecting on a quote: true spirituality is obeying the commands of scripture and effecting change in the real world, not hiding behind religious experience.
• reading through Matthew 28:19-20 using Eugene Peterson's "The Message" which really inspired me
• started reading C.S. Lewis 4 Loves: affection, friendship, eros and charity and decided to borrow it to read through in details
• Cutting various postcards and putting them on a sketch book
  

It was a relaxing yet powerful way of spending time with community members in God's Presence (the interesting thing was that we didn't even have to chat with one another). Just being together was time well spent. I really enjoyed it, and I am thankful and feel blessed to have this group of friends!