Emmaus at Pilot Mill

Reflection Questions:
1. What is waiting like for you- what do you feel as you wait?
2. Hans Urs Balthasar writes that sin is rooted in impatience, “Patience is the basic constituent of Christianity.” Do you agree with this view of the central role of patience in the Christian life? Why or why not?
3. How does the liturgical year act as a counterformation to the culture?
4. What are some ways you’ve been intentional about making space and time for beauty, enjoyment, or delight?
5. How does worshipping through your senses influence your relationship with pleasure and beauty?
6. How do you think beauty is part of the mission of the church?

Suggested Practice:
Choose a practice or two for this week.
1. Notice your reaction to times where you are forced to wait this week. Reflect on what your response reveals about your view of time.
2. Next time you’re waiting (whether in line, waiting for an appointment, in traffic, etc.), try to limit distractions. Put away your smartphone and any work while waiting. Just simply wait. Notice your thoughts, emotions, and surroundings.
3. Set aside intentional time this week to do something you find lovely, pleasurable, or delightful.
4. Taste, smell, or look at something pleasing and beautiful. Journal about or discuss that experience of beauty and how it orients and shapes you.

Reflection Questions:
1. What parts of your job do you most enjoy? Least enjoy?
2. There is no division between the sacred and secular work for believers. How do you see your work life and your worship/spiritual life entwined? How do they influence and shape each other?
3. How would approaching work as a craft and as a place of formation change the way you think about your work?
4. Do you feel like you’ve found a third way/middle (between constant production and escaping all work) in your work life? Why or why not?

Suggested Practice:
Choose a practice or two for this week. As a CG, share what you do for a living and begin a weekly practice of participating in the joys and struggles of each persons day-to-day work.
1. Pray each morning that God would send you out to do the work He has given you to do.
2. Reflect on how a task in your daily work forms you. Journal or share with a friend about ways your work has grown you in repentance and dependence on God.
3. Prayerfully invite God to teach you to approach your work tasks as prayers. What would it mean to be in your work, yet on your knees?
4. Try to do a task you don’t like without complaining.
5. If you sometimes work more than is healthy, avoid email or work tasks after hours this week and spend that time in rest.

Reflection Questions:
1. In what ways do you struggle to seek peace with those nearest you?
2. What is one way to seek shalom in your home, work, or small sphere of daily experience?
3. How do you see your small sphere and ordinary days as part of the broader mission and work of God’s redemption?
4. In what ways have you experienced speaking good news to each other and becoming good news to each other in your relationships with those at EMMAUS or other churches?
5. How do you feel that Christian friendship and community differ from other kinds of community?

Suggested Practice:
1. Pray about how to be part of God’s broader redemption of the world in your own life.
2. Spend time praying for peace in your home, neighborhood, city, state, country, and world.
3. Read and reflect on Jeremiah 29:4-14. Actively participating in your city. Support a local business this week. Vote on Tuesday.
4. Practice gratitude for the neighborhood/place/city you live in.