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Wisdom Saying
The accumulation of things does not bring us true joy. We live in a culture that esteems accumulation, but the math of spirituality involves subtraction rather than addition.
*J.David Muyskens, Forty Days to a Closer Walk with God: The Practice of Centering Prayer
Comments
There are two types of dissatisfying accumulation that fill us up. These are dissatisfying for they only temporarily, at best, offer a sense of satisfaction.
1) There is an external filling up.
When we talk of simplifying life, we usually mean giving up some of these outward things. We may complain that we have too much stuff; again, we mean too many physical objects. Likewise, we can mean by a physical thing a relationship with a person or persons.
2) There is an internal filling up.
This is the more subtle form of dissatisfying fullness. We fill our hearts with assorted attachments, delights, imaginations, ideas, beliefs, thoughts, and aspirations. Just as we can cram full our outer living space, we can cram full our mind and heart.
Thankfully, another fullness is offered to us. This is a permanently satisfying fullness. Listen to St. Paul, in Ephesians 3.18-19 (NRSV).
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God.
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3) There is fullness of Divine Presence.
The way to this fullness is through an intimate communion with Love. We come, by intimacy with the triune Lover, to know experientially and intuitively, in a spiritually inward sense, the immensity of the Love of God, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit indwelling us completely.
When we are already full and glutting on more, where is there room left for Christ Jesus to fill us up with Divine Love? Is not this Love the fullness of God~all of the benevolent, intimate Presence? Is this not the Fullness of Intimacy the true Christian longs most to enjoy?
So, you may need to do some subtraction. You may need to resolve to subtract from your life some external and internal things, and it is more difficult to subtract the internal possessions.
If you want more of the Presence of God in your life, then, you have to make room for that to happen. God enters only to the extent that we welcome God. We welcome God by wanting more of God so much we are willing to subtract even good things from our lives to receive Him more within our very center, where we enjoy a mysterious and blissful intimacy in Loving.
Suggested Reflection
1) Is our triune God calling you to receive more of His fullness? What do you need to subtract to have more room for Christ?
2) How are you learning more, through experience, of the vastness of the Love of Christ?
See next page for details on OneLife Ministries, Brian's book An Ache for Union, and material pertaining to sources used in the writing.
Feel free to submit a query. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
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