|
Today's Scripture ~ Spiritual Exercise
Read the scripture a few times. Then, engage it with prayerful meditation or Lectio Divina. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you, applying the scripture to you personally.
A fountain of life is the mouth of the just...
*Proverbs 10.11a, NAB
Wisdom Sayings
If we really want to pray, we must first learn to listen: for in the silence of the heart God speaks. And to be able to hear God, we need a clean heart. Let us listen to God, to what He has to say. We cannot speak unless we have listened, unless we have made our connection with God. From the fullness of the heart, the mouth will speak, the mind will think.
*Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The Joy of Living. Compiled by Jaya Chalika and Edward Le Joly.
When the soul's incisive power is aroused against the passions, we should know that it is time for silence, as the hour of battle is at hand. But when this turbulence grows calm, whether through prayer or through acts of mercy, we may then be moved by a desire to proclaim God's mysteries, restraining the wings of our intellect with the cords of humility. For unless a man sets himself at utterly at nought, he cannot speak of the majesty of God.
*St. Diadochos of Photiki. mycopticchurch.com .
Wisdom Story
In the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific some villagers practice a unique form of logging. If a tree is too large to be felled with an axe, the natives cut it down by yelling at it. (Can't lay my hands on the article, but I swear I read it.) Woodsmen with special powers creep up on a tree just at dawn and suddenly scream at it at the top of their lungs. They continue this for thirty days. The tree dies and falls over. The theory is that the hollering kills the spirit of the tree. According to the villagers, it always works.
Ah, those poor nave innocents. Such quaintly charming habits of the jungle. Screaming at trees, indeed. How primitive. Too bad they don't have the advantages of modern technology and the scientific mind.
Me? I yell at my wife. And yell at the telephone and the lawn mower. And yell at the TV and the newspaper and my children. I've been known to shake my fist and yell at the sky at times.
The man next door yells at his car a lot. And this summer I heard him yell at a stepladder for most of an afternoon. We modern, urban, educated folks yell at traffic and umpires and bills and banks and machines-especially machines. Machines and relatives get most of the yelling.
Don't know what good it does. Machines and things just sit there. Even kicking doesn't always help. As for people, well, the Solomon Islanders may have a point. Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts....
*Robert Fulghum. All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.
Reflections
Colossians 4.5-6, in The Message reads: "Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don't miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out."
1) What does it mean for you to be "gracious in speech"?
2) In what sense is your speech potentially a "fountain of life"?
3) Do you need more time in silence to purify your heart, so your words will be more kind in content and tenor?
4) Can a person be pure in speech without being pure in heart? Explain.
5) Can a person purify the heart adequately without a practice of silent openness to the Spirit of God? Explain.
6) Do you talk too much? Explain.
* * *
For Brian's on-line audio sermons, go to www.wherethelightshines.org and select Pastor's Corner; on the following page is his weekly sermons given at Christ United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL.
* * *
For replies and biographical information, and submission to "The Light Shines" daily devotionals ~ a ministry of Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL, see next page:
Continued... |
