Almost every morning I pray the Celtic Morning Prayer from the Northumbria community. It starts with “One thing have I desired …”, I always pause and think what it is that I really desire. This morning it was fame, like an ugly black monster in a white fairy world it reared its ugly head. I have this desire to be known and revered and lauded, to be on a stage, to be noticed … The Morning Prayer helped me to refocus and confess …

“One thing have I desired, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”

Then I read the reading and here’s part of what it said:

“… those whose hands have tried the most, and whose eyes have seen the furthest, have come back to regard first the deeper evangel of individual lives, and the philanthropy of quiet ways, and the slow work of leavening others one by one with the spirit of Christ.” Celtic prayers, p.708
The light bulb glowed again, the ugly monster crawled back to his despicable hole. My Spirit description is to be obscured in Christ. To do the slow work of spiritual formation in myself and then to work at “leavening others with the Spirit of Christ.” Amen.