Next In-person walk: Saturday, August 8, 9-10 a.m.
Covenant Presbyterian Church back parking lot, 2222 at Mo-Pac, Austin
Next Zoom discussion: August 8, 2026, 10:30 AM Central Time (US and Canada), Zoom link is here.
By Janet Davis
Walk In: Losing our Lives by Letting Go of Earning Provision
43 “There is a saying, ‘Love your friends and hate your enemies.’ 44 But I say: Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way you will be acting as true sons of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust too. 46 If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even scoundrels do that much. 47 If you are friendly only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even the heathen do that. 48 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.
Matthew 5 (The Living Bible)
Questions
Most of us grow up with a profound sense of our need to earn our way in the world. The reality of the nature of God’s provision and love being “rained” on the just and unjust, righteous and unrighteous, the evil and the good, workers and those at rest, does not occur to us.
What are your internal reactions (all welcome) to the fact that many fundamental aspects of God’s provision are not earned?
What does this pattern of acting by God tell you about God and the nature of God’s love?
Where are you still trying to earn provision?
How might accepting this fact of God’s unmerited provision be transformational for you?
Center: Meeting the Holy One in God’s Generosity
“On Generosity” (excerpt)
…and in the midst of our perceived deficit
you come
you come giving bread in the wilderness
you come giving children at the 11th hour
you come giving homes to exiles
you come giving futures to the shut down
you come giving easter joy to the dead
you come – fleshed in Jesus.
and we watch while
the blind receive their sight
the lame walk
the lepers are cleansed
the deaf hear
the dead are raised
the poor dance and sing…
It dawns on us – late rather than soon-
that you “give food in due season
you open your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”
By your giving, break our cycles of imagined scarcity
override our presumed deficits
quiet our anxieties of lack
transform our perceptual field to see
the abundance………mercy upon mercy
blessing upon blessing….
by Walter Brueggeman
Questions
The reality of God’s generosity can be unsettling for us. Why do you think that might be?
Where (what arenas of life, personhood, career, health, geography, or relationship) do you tend to live in scarcity? Where might you invite God to come?
How might your sense of scarcity be more imagined than reality? Presumed rather than actual? Anxiety rooted in a lack of perception or blindness?
How might these thoughts about God’s generosity meet those places?
What new invitations do you sense from God? What might change look like for you?
Walk Out: Saving Our Lives by Accepting Flawed Abundance
Accepting This
…I have discovered everything
I could need or ask for
is right here—
in flawed abundance.
We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.
Ultimately,
we are small living things
awakened in the stream,
not gods who carve out rivers.
Like human fish,
we are asked to experience
meaning in the life that moves
through the gill of our heart. There is nothing to do
and nowhere to go.
Accepting this,
we can do everything
and go anywhere
By Mark Nepo
Questions
In opening to God’s generosity, we often quickly meet how different it is than the generosity our imaginations conjured! (We are inclined to think in terms of storehouses not enough-ness, independence/walls not vital, life-giving relationship, and a challenge-free existence not strength, compassion, or comfort)
What is your internal response to the idea of “flawed abundance?” (again, all responses are welcome)
Where do you meet resistance in this poem? Can you think of anything that might invite that hardness to soften?
How might our acceptance of flawed abundance be connected to acceptance of our place in the stream rather than among the “gods”?
Is there a particular arena where you are being invited to accept “flawed abundance”? to simply allow life to flow through the gill of your heart?