In Him We Live And Move And Have Our Being

I just discovered the blog of an Orthodox monk, Abbot Tryphon, called The Morning Offering. In it, he recently shared a quote that speaks volumes to me.

…. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

…. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

When we think of Jesus, many people envision a Lord who is tolerant… even rather indulgent at times…  of men and their sinfulness. And I do believe that the desire of God’s heart is to be forgiving of and reconciled with each of us. But the “tolerant and indulgent” Jesus didn’t have much patience with self-righteousness. And perhaps the quote from Solzhenitsyn can help us to understand why this is so.

When we sit in judgment of other people, we are blinded to our own shortcomings. And when we fail to recognize our own sinfulness, pride conquers conquers any vestiges of humility in our hearts.

In Luke 18, we find the familiar story of the two men – one self-righteous and one humble – who went to the Temple to pray. The NASB translation of the prayer of the self-satisfied Pharisee is interesting: “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself.: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’” He was so busy looking at the sin of the tax collector and at his own virtuousness that he didn’t really see God. He was even praying to himself!

When our objective is to somehow justify ourselves before God by denigrating others, spiritual blindness results. But a passage in 1 John 4, 11-12 shows us how to clear up our foggy vision:

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Today, let us love each other and, in so doing, God will be revealed in us and to us.

H/T to Dorothy Vining at Musings at 85.

“Holy Spirit of God, who prefers before all temples the upright heart and pure, instruct us in all truth; what is dark, illumine; what is low, raise and support; what is shallow, deepen; that every chapter in our lives may witness to your power and justify the ways of God to men. In the name of Jesus, giver of all grace. Amen.”

The man who penned this prayer, John Milton, lived from 1608-1674. Truth is truth no matter who pens it or when it was penned.

Amen

Be definite. Don’t let your resolutions be like fireworks that sparkle for a moment, to leave behind as hard reality a blackened, useless stub that one throws disgustedly away.

Ouch.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been guilty of this far, far, far more often than not. Rather than carrying out my resolutions, I tend to set them down and walk away without even remembering where I left them. They’re even better at hiding than my car keys – I remember my car keys at least once a day, while I may forget my good intentions for weeks on end.

I wonder where they go. Do they disappear like a spiritual stray sock?

I’ve wondered at times if something on the order of a hair shirt would help me to keep my good intentions from melting away. By virtue of being ever-presently annoying, perhaps it could help me be better focused on following through. Or there’s the kinder, gentler approach: I ran across something called the MotivAider. Evidently it’s about the size of a pager. You keep it in your pocket after setting it to vibrate as often as you feel you need to be reminded. The intervals can be as short as once a minute. According to their website, here’s how it works:

To use the MotivAider, you first devise a personal message – a word or a short phrase or sentence – that will tune you in to the action you need to take or to a reason that motivates you to take the action. For example, say you’ve decided that you should stop participating in the incessant whining that’s going on at work because it’s only making things worse for you and everyone else. From now on, you intend to make sure that your own contribution to conversations is positive and upbeat. Your personal message might simply be, “Upbeat.”

After you’ve decided on a personal message, you decide how often you’d like to receive it. Say you make an educated guess that to follow through on your intention, you’ll need to have your attention focused on thinking, “Upbeat,” at least once every ten minutes. You simply set the MotivAider for ten minutes and turn it on. The MotivAider is now ready to serve, as one user put it, “as your intention’s full-time guardian angel.”

The MotivAider will count down from the ten minute interval you set, and when it’s done counting, the whole device will silently vibrate for a couple of seconds. Then the MotivAider will automatically reset itself to ten minutes, count down again, and vibrate again when it’s done counting. It will automatically keep on repeating the cycle of counting down, vibrating, and resetting itself.

You know what’s really scary? I actually thought about buying it… but “$59.50 + shipping & handling” cured me of that.

So I turn to you, my friends. What helps you to follow through with good intentions?

Please share your ideas in the comments section below. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say!

Be definite. Don’t let your resolutions be like fireworks that sparkle for a moment, to leave behind as hard reality a blackened, useless stub that one throws disgustedly away.

Ouch.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been guilty of this far, far, far more often than not. Rather than carrying out my resolutions, I tend to set them down and walk away without even remembering where I left them. They’re even better at hiding than my car keys; I remember my car keys at least once a day, while I may forget my good intentions for weeks on end.

I wonder where they go. Do they disappear like a spiritual stray sock?

I’ve wondered at times if something on the order of a hair shirt would help me to keep my good intentions from melting away. By virtue of being ever-presently annoying, perhaps it could help me be better focused on following through. Or there’s the kinder, gentler approach: I ran across something called the MotivAider. Evidently it’s about the size of a pager. You keep it in your pocket after setting it to vibrate as often as you feel you need to be reminded. The intervals can be as short as once a minute. According to their website, here’s how it works:

To use the MotivAider, you first devise a personal message – a word or a short phrase or sentence – that will tune you in to the action you need to take or to a reason that motivates you to take the action. For example, say you’ve decided that you should stop participating in the incessant whining that’s going on at work because it’s only making things worse for you and everyone else. From now on, you intend to make sure that your own contribution to conversations is positive and upbeat. Your personal message might simply be, “Upbeat.”

After you’ve decided on a personal message, you decide how often you’d like to receive it. Say you make an educated guess that to follow through on your intention, you’ll need to have your attention focused on thinking, “Upbeat,” at least once every ten minutes. You simply set the MotivAider for ten minutes and turn it on. The MotivAider is now ready to serve, as one user put it, “as your intention’s full-time guardian angel.”

The MotivAider will count down from the ten minute interval you set, and when it’s done counting, the whole device will silently vibrate for a couple of seconds. Then the MotivAider will automatically reset itself to ten minutes, count down again, and vibrate again when it’s done counting. It will automatically keep on repeating the cycle of counting down, vibrating, and resetting itself.

You know what’s really scary? I actually considered buying it… but “$59.50 + shipping & handling” cured me of that.

So I turn to you, my friends. What helps you to follow through with good intentions?

Please share your ideas in the comments section below. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say!

May the blessing of light be on you, light without and light within.
May the blessed sunshine shine on you and warm your heart till it glows like a great peat fire,
so that the stranger may come and warm himself at it, and also a friend.
And may the light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in the two windows of a house,
bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm;
and may the blessings of the rain be on you – the soft sweet rain.
May it fall upon your spirit so that all the little flowers may spring up and shed their sweetness on the air.
And may the blessings of the Great Rains be on you,
may they beat upon your spirit and wash it fair and clear,
and leave there many a shining pool where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the Earth be on you –
the great round earth,
may you ever have a kindly greeting for those you pass as you’re going along the roads.
May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it,
tired at the end of a day,
and may it rest easy over you when at the last, you lay out under it,
may it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be off from under it quickly and up and off,
and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you all and bless you kindly.

I presume that a significant percentage of the people who are kind enough to drop by this site are (or have been) married or involved in some sort of love relationship. And despite a firm conviction from the beginning that this live would both last and grow stronger, some of us have worried about (or experienced) the 7-year itch. Supposedly after 7 years, a roving eye is a common phenomenon.

I’m not sure of the time frame, but sometimes a similar disorder affects our relationship with God. Our attention becomes distracted by other things: the worries and joys, challenges and successes of day-to-day life. And then one day we realize that we’ve somehow lost touch with the One we once loved whole-heartedly.

Perhaps some of the advice for rekindling love in a marriage can also be used to restore our love for God. On this premise, I embarked on an on-line quest to see what the experts suggest for couples who discover that “the honeymoon is over”:

Make a commitment to work on improving your relationship. Any relationship – whether with another person or with God – require some effort. It’s not possible for one individual to be solely responsible for sustaining a relationship; it takes two.

Save some energy to be devoted exclusively on your loved one each day. Few of us are capable of doing two things well simultaneously.

Open the lines of communication. Share what’s on your mind, and listen as well. In Deuteronomy 30, we read, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” Loving, listening, and being faithful… three important activities which help a relationship to grow and to last.

Be more generous with compliments than with criticisms. Be thankful for the good things in your relationship, and express this thanks regularly. Romans 1:21 is an interesting verse. In it, the author is referring to men who practice godlessness and wickedness. He says, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” As we recognize and voice the good things about those we love, it seems that there are more good things to recognize.

Frequently perform small unexpected acts of kindness. Here re some words of wisdom from Mother Teresa:

Don’t think that love, to be true, has to be extraordinary. What is necessary is to continue to love. How does a lamp burn, if it is not by the continuous feeding of little drops of oil? When there is no oil, there is no light and the bridegroom will say: “I do not know you”. Dear friends, what are our drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things from everyday life: the joy, the generosity, the little good things, the humility and the patience. A simple thought for someone else. Our way to be silent, to listen, to forgive, to speak and to act. [These] are the real drops of oil that make our lamps burn vividly our whole life. Don’t look for Jesus far away, He is not there. He is in you, take care of your lamp and you will see Him.

As we do small acts of kindness and love, God is revealed to us and in us.

Sue
Blog: http://acts17verse28.blogspot.com

You shall keep My statutes and practice them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you. -Leviticus 20:8

It is good to remember that God is called Jehovah-M’Kaddesh – the LORD who sanctifies. As we pray for ourselves it is important to understand that God’s purpose in our lives is to sanctify us.. to make us like Jesus. This kind of prayer is one of submission.. we can pray it when things are the darkest.. asking God to help us flow in His purposes.. for His kingdom and will to come in our lives.

Open up our eyes today dear Father to see what you are accomplishing in our lives. We submit ourselves to you.. let Your kingdom come in us and Your will be done in our lives.

Amen

I just discovered the blog of an Orthodox monk, Abbot Tryphon, called The Morning Offering. In it, he recently shared a quote that speaks volumes to me.

…. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

…. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

When we think of Jesus, many people envision a Lord who is tolerant… even rather indulgent at times…  of men and their sinfulness. And I do believe that the desire of God’s heart is to be forgiving of and reconciled with each of us. But the “tolerant and indulgent” Jesus didn’t have much patience with self-righteousness. And perhaps the quote from Solzhenitsyn can help us to understand why this is so.

When we sit in judgment of other people, we are blinded to our own shortcomings. And when we fail to recognize our own sinfulness, pride conquers conquers any vestiges of humility in our hearts.

In Luke 18, we find the familiar story of the two men – one self-righteous and one humble – who went to the Temple to pray. The NASB translation of the prayer of the self-satisfied Pharisee is interesting: “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself.: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’” He was so busy looking at the sin of the tax collector and at his own virtuousness that he didn’t really see God. He was even praying to himself!

When our objective is to somehow justify ourselves before God by denigrating others, spiritual blindness results. But a passage in 1 John 4, 11-12 shows us how to clear up our foggy vision:

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Today, let us love each other and, in so doing, God will be revealed.

Do you know what your children are watching on television or reading online? As parents, it’s so hard to keep up with the constant stream of media that your kids come in contact with. It could be sending your kids mixed signals. Don’t you wish you had someone or something that told you what media messages were directed at your children?

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