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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Quote
Let us not be afraid to be humble, small and helpless to prove our love for God.
*Mother Teresa of Calcutta. At www.motherteresa.org . Daily Reflections: Sept 28, 2009.
Prayer
Jesus, be my all in all,
that through me, in little ways daily,
others may sense Your Presence
shining through my words and acts.
I surrender my all, baptized in your death,
that by rising to new life in You daily,
I may lose my life to find it
in loving others for You. Amen.
*Brian Kenneth Wilcox
Scripture
And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.
*Matthew 10.1, KJV
Spiritual Teaching
The following excerpt is from Mother Teresa of Calcutta. A Gift for God: Prayers and Meditations. Mother Teresa tells of an experience with a girl who came from outside India to join her Missionaries of Charity:
We have a rule that the very next day new arrivals must go to the Home for the Dying. So I told this girl: “You saw Father during Holy Mass, with what love and care he touched Jesus in the Host. Do the same when you go to the Home for the Dying, because it is the same Jesus you will find there in the broken bodies of the poor.
And they went. After three hours the newcomer came back and said to me with a big smile – I have never seen a smile quite like that - “Mother, I have been touching the body of Christ for three hours.” And I said to her: “How – what did you do?” She replied: “When we arrived there, they brought a man who had fallen into a drain, and been there for some time. He was covered with wounds and dirt and maggots, and I cleaned him and I knew I was touching the body of Christ.”
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We, too, can touch Christ daily. Possibly, we are not called to go to somewhere like India to work with the dying; still, suffering persons are all around us. We have friends and family who are suffering immensely. And possibly the greatest suffering is the loss of fulfillment and purpose, the blight of depression and despair, of spiritual lostness, in a culture of material prosperity. Likely, the hunger for love is the greatest disease of Western cultures, a greater illness than any physical sickness or suffering.
So, we need power. We dare not try to touch Christ in the suffering without spiritual power. Otherwise, we will find ourselves unable rightly to touch Christ, and we will find the suffering too great for us – and we will discover ourselves being drawn into the suffering so that we cannot well minister our touch of and to Christ.
Jesus sent his followers out with “power,” so says the Matthew Gospel. The Greek noun is exousia, meaning “power” or “privilege” (Young's Analytical Concordance).
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Do we have the blessing, yes, the privilege, to receive the power to touch the Body of Christ daily? Yes. Do we get this from begging or athletic like spiritual effort? No. We get this power by a conforming of our will to the Will of Christ. Unless I surrender to see the other as Christ sees him or her, and to offer my being to that person as Christ does and wills to do through me, I shall not have the power. I do not get the power and, then, surrender my will; I must say, “Yes, Jesus, I am willing. Enable me to see and serve the other as You do, and You will to do through me.” Then, I shall have the power given, not gotten.
What else shall I do? I shall daily renew a resolve to the consecration of my life to this service of touching Christ in this world. I shall pray to reverence the other as much as I reverence the Christ, for, indeed, Christ and the other is one. I shall be prepared to admit my shortcomings in this regard, but only as a means of inspiring the resolve to depend more on Christ to serve Christ through His Presence ministering Grace to the other.
* * *
Then, I know the purpose of sitting with Christ, with the posture of a beginner always. I know why I must first receive by faith and in Grace what only consequent I shall be prepared to give by faith and in Grace. “Sitting” in Christ is a metaphor for this receptivity, and precedes the “walk,” in Watchman Nee, Sit, Walk, Stand:
When once we have been well and truly seated and have found our strength in sitting down, then we do in fact begin to walk. Sitting describes our position with Christ in the heavenlies. Walking is the practical outworking of that heavenly position on earth.
Nee refers to the beautiful text of Ephesians 2.6. The scripture reads in the King James Version: “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Nee refers to this as our position, and our position prepares us for our service in the world.
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For the Christian, indeed, his or her work of touching others as Christ, comes from Christ and a prior work of Christ on his or her behalf, as well as for the one to be touched: “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God” (Ephesians 5.2, NLT).
Responding
1. Relate the opening quote of Mother Teresa to our Teaching for today.
2. How might you enhance your readiness and preparedness to meet and serve the Christ in others you meet daily?
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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