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Today's Scripture
5With all your heart
you must trust the LORD
and not your own judgment.
6Always let him lead you,
and he will clear the road
for you to follow.
*Proverbs 3.5-6 (CEV)
35That evening, Jesus said to his disciples, "Let's cross to the east side." 36So they left the crowd, and his disciples started across the lake with him in the boat. Some other boats followed along. 37Suddenly a windstorm struck the lake. Waves started splashing into the boat, and it was about to sink.
38Jesus was in the back of the boat with his head on a pillow, and he was asleep. His disciples woke him and said, "Teacher, don't you care that we're about to drown?"
39Jesus got up and ordered the wind and the waves to be quiet. The wind stopped, and everything was calm.
40Jesus asked his disciples, "Why were you afraid? Don't you have any faith?"
41Now they were more afraid than ever and said to each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"
*Mark 4.35-41 (CEV)
Wisdom Words
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
*C. S. Lewis
Wisdom Story and Comments
Wind sways skyscrapers. Persons inside find this uncomfortable, and it makes stomachs queasy.
Engineers and architects addressed the discomfort in planning the Citicorp Center in New York. Atop the fifty-nine story building, they installed a machine called a tuned mass damper. This is, practically, a four-hundred-and-ten-ton block of concrete joined to huge springs and floating on a film of oil. When the building sways, the block dampens the movement and calms insider's stomachs.
The Proverbs reminds us trust is essential to a truly human life. We are, so to speak, built to trust the Architect of Life, to see ourselves, like all creatures, dependent on a Higher Order. Trust in God dampens the chaos of life, making us less reactive, more centered in the Inner Spirit, and more trusting that all will be well. We have faith that One still speaks calm and quiet over the turbulence within and around us.
We are tempted either to move toward faith in our understanding or faith in the hidden, but real, God-Presence. We repeatedly choose. Our choices develop toward a faith-full or un-faith-full living. Faith-full living is repeatedly faithing in God amidst all things. Faith-ing can become our habitual response to life.
The choice for faith in God does not mean disowning reason and action, as though these gifts in themselves are not sacred and to be engaged. Rather, faith in God entails the subordination of these natural gifts to the Wisdom and Operations of Love.
In C. S. Lewis' words, we are to aim at heaven. To me, this implies the Higher Order, engaged through spiritual awareness, is the "world" from which we are to live. If we do this, that "world" integrates and absorbs "this world" in its Wisdom and Power.
In traditional terms we are speaking of Abandonment to Divine Providence. We practice this each time we surrender to the Divine in prayerful meditation and, ultimately, in the act of loving contemplation. Therefore, meditation and contemplation are means to practice trusting God, and more so as this leads to abandon faith in my understanding and my action to lean toward the Spirit of Christ.
This leads to one reason many churches and persons resist the abandonment in Silent Prayer and openness to Spiritual Discernment ~ we find it offensive to surrender pride in reliance on our reasoning and action. Nothing is more offensive to human self-reliance than trusting the Unseen and Hidden Hand. Then, a second reason is lack of education in such spiritual Art.
Very little around us will encourage us to trust God; after all, that is a little too "old fashioned" for our culture and, sadly, often the Church. Trust in God, hence, will be sustained by choice of will arising from a close fellowship with the Holy Mystery. This trust will be enabled only by a daily practice of devotion that connects us with God as a real Presence in our lives and world.
Spiritual Exercise
Prayerfully reflect on areas of your life that you sense call for a more conscious trust in God. Take time to pray about these matters, through words at first, then, relax into prayerful Quiet to discern how the Holy Spirit might be with you in these areas.
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*C. S. Lewis quote from brainyquote.com .
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:
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