A sure way to dampen creativity and imagination is to combine 7 deadly words. The sentence works well for those who are resolutely comfortable with the way things are and have absolutely no intention whatsoever of changing. This 7 word sentence rejects things new, it fears breaking out of familiar patterns, or may be just plain old stubbornness: "But we've always done it that way."

Corporate visionaries must overcome the 7 deadly words to stay competitive. Choir directors who want to introduce new hymns and preachers suggesting innovation tremble at the sentence. Youth naturally rebel against the sentence because they meet the challenges of the world with fresh eyes and abundant energy.

Prophets recoiled at the 7 deadly words because their job was to shake things up and make new things happen. Enslaved by Babylon, the Israelites had gotten comfortable living on borrowed memories of the way things were when God parted the Red Sea. But God told Isaiah to tell the people that they should neither cling to the past nor keep on doing what they had always been doing. God said, "Watch for the new things I am doing. It is happening right now — look at it: roads through wilderness, freshwater streams in the desert!"

Mercifully, Westminster rarely hears the 7 deadly words invoked with any seriousness. We seem to keep a healthy balance between the pursuit of new opportunities and challenges, and holding on to treasured traditions without stubbornly grasping onto the past. A newly retired minister recently asked me how long I've been at WPC and I told him 21 years, which shocked him. I explained that the congregation keeps me fresh and challenged, encourages my adventures, and welcomes our challenges to embrace the possibilities and things new.

On Thursday we remembered and thanked God for Sarah Todd who died on January 17. Many of you did not know Sarah because she had been weakened and ill for the last several years. Among her many attributes and gifts, Sarah was a retired career Army officer, a Legion of Merit awardee, served as Elder, Deacon, clerk of Session, parish caregiver, and a mentor to youth, was a published writer, and one of the most highly organized human beings I have ever known — rivaling my best software program in that regard.

Early in our friendship it was her exceptional skills at organization, detail, precision, and record keeping that led me to think of her as predictable, linear, and prone to the preservation process of the 7 deadly words. Several years after I arrived here, however, Lt. Col. Todd, who presided over the reorganization of Letterman Hospital at the Presidio, decided, at age 71, to break those molds in order to pay more attention to her spiritual life. She enrolled in the spirituality program at the seminary. Sarah birthed the Spiritual Life Commission and its nourishing programs, now led by Erwin Martinez, and, last year, she celebrated Jan Reynold's creation of the Center For Inspired Living.

As her faith and practices deepened, her poems, prayers, journal entries, and commentaries on my sermons generally replaced memos and reports. Sarah broke out of the box, soared in majestic spirals beyond a previously linear faith, and jettisoned the 7 deadly words. She honored and cherished her traditions, not as shields against being fully engaged with life, but, among others, as free, open pathways to greater personal insight, abundant living, an ever-deepening personal relationship with Christ, and compassion for others.

Sarah learned, a bit late, but not too late in life, that "clinging to the past and dwelling on what happened long ago," as Isaiah put it, blocked both her vision and experience of the divine, of the "new things that God was making happen," of "roads in her wilderness and streams of water in her desert." She discovered how the linear 7 deadly words could hinder the growth of her spirituality, poetry, prayers, and insightful inquiry.

For a just a few moments, in silence, I want you to name:

• A place of captivity that hinders your spiritual life, or
• Something you hold to so tightly that it blocks your vision of something new God has for you, or
• A place where you seek safety in the mantra, "But I've always done it that way!"

<<< PAUSE // MEDITATE >>>

I want you to take away from this teaching two simple beliefs on which you might pray, meditate, reflect, or contemplate for 5 minutes each day this week:

Each of us has a strangling wilderness somewhere in our souls — a dense tangle that is neither safe to enter nor is there a clear way thought it. Christ wants to create a highway that will safely take us through that untamed place to a place of inner peace, clarity, and new life.

Each of has a dry, desert place somewhere in our souls— you know the place: you pump sand when you want to pray or meditate, your soul is parched and you might not even know why. Christ wants to cause a spring of refreshing water to well up in you to nourish and grow in you a lush garden that will make your life abundant, full, radiant, purposeful, and joyous.

So, what will it take to get 5 minutes a day that might put you on God's highway through your wilderness or fill your desert with God's living water?