This week’s devotional is written by John Chan. He is a native Angeleno and a California architect with extensive experience in projects across the United States and abroad, including public buildings, universities, and large-scale master planning. John invites us to look at our communities and cities, and ask the question: were these spaces constructed for the sake of profit and commodities or for the flourishing of humanity?

Week 2 Lenten practice
by John Chan

SCRIPTURE
Psalm 23 (NKJ)
1 The Lord is my shepherd; 
I shall not want.
2  He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
3  He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
4  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.
6  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord
Forever.

PERSPECTIVE
When we survey the language of Psalm 23, we encounter someone who is not only poetically aware of the environment they inhabit, but we also see someone who has developed a meaningful inner landscape.  

As an individual, the psalmist demonstrates an awareness between the physical and spiritual environments and is able to correlate both - not excluding one from the other, but achieving a confluence, journeying with God through both physical and spiritual.

On a societal level, it can be extrapolated that the inner and outer journey also has a more general cultural effect - that the external landscape we inhabit is directly affected by the collective interior landscapes of those who inhabit it, both elevated by societal aspirations and virtues and simultaneously suffering under communal vices and hubris. We, therefore, have occasions to both celebrate and lament, as participants of the broader community around us.

REFLECTION
When we train our eyes to our immediate living environment - a city, a town, an apartment complex, a suburb, do we see our inner values reflected there? Or do we see the evidence of our collective weaknesses, our vices? 

Among our own environments, can we find the path to the inner place of quiet and stillness? Are they well-traveled that we might easily return, even in the dark?

How might we continue to grow our own interior landscapes? And who leads our journey through it? Do we rely on the signposts of society - or can a voice be heard calling out in the wilderness, drawing us out into uncharted territory, finding our own way deeper each time?  

PRAYER
Lord, help me to find you deeply in my inner world: find me new trails, new caves, new vistas. Lead me through my dark valleys and along glorious ridges to find the glory within me that I might better see others around me, and that they too have worlds expanding inside. And together, may we occupy a vast space which we are collectively constructing, both on the inside here, and outside there.

Let me set tables in the presence of conflicts. Let my inner world be a healing salve to the outer world around me. From the overflow of your life in mine, make me the oil with which each place is anointed the House of the Lord.

ACTION
Find a place in yourself where the pasture is green, or the water is still, or where you have felt loved, where you have been encouraged, where you have been acknowledged, where you have heard the voice of God. Mark the path.

Find or recall a physical place - either in your dwelling or in your neighborhood - where you feel something is not right, where there is something local to be easily fixed, or something large and structurally unjust that will be a battle to right. Imagine the thing that should be done, and imagine your role in doing it. Mark the intention. See where it leads you.