By what story do you construct your life? What story dominates your life? Continue reading
Category Archives: Meditations
Connections between desires and anxiety
In the past I have written on the topic of desire and how our cultivation of it shapes our entire view of self, other and the expression of our will. Here’s a thought: Is anxiety anything more than the will responding to the perception of a desired object just out of reach, something that appears graspable but just beyond the fingertips of control? We want something and so our focus is on protecting it, grasping it, maintaining it, gaining it (coupled with the deep concern that if we do not maintain our vigilance, we will not be able to fulfill that desire).
Yesterday, Diane Langberg sent me this quote of one of her favorite dead theologians, John MacDuff, that illustrates how life orbits around central desires:
There is a gravitation in the moral as in the physical world. When love to God is habitually in the ascendant or occupying place of the will, it gathers round it all the other desires of the soul as satellites, and whirls them along with it in its orbit round the center of attraction [the core desire].
Quotation used by John MacDuff from Hewitson’s Life as found in The Mind of Jesus, p. 62. For a link to full texts of some of MacDuff’s devotional work, see here.
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Filed under Desires, Meditations
The Holy Spirit is better than Jesus in the flesh?
Which would be better: be present with the Lord or have the Holy Spirit without Jesus’ physical presence? On Sunday, my pastor preached from John 16 about the advantages of having the Spirit. Seems there is power in us through the Spirit that would not be with us if we only had Jesus in the flesh. This power convicts us of sin, judges Satan, and guides us into all truth. Jesus tells his disciples that this is better. Not because it fills in some weakness he had, but because it changes (gives us) our conscience (my word, not his).
Many of us long, as Paul did, to be absent in the body and present with the Lord. A good longing indeed. But we ought not forget that we have something better than the disciples had when they walked with Jesus. As long as Jesus tarries and we are given breath, we have the advantage of the Spirit.
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Filed under Meditations, Uncategorized
Mindful of God’s presence in the beauty of the Maine wood
There is a pine and birch wood behind my parent’s house. A path crosses the back corner of their lot and traverses along a brook and bog. I’m sure it was once a logging road, but now parts have little trees growing in the middle. The wood is reclaiming portions of the trail and in a few years only the keenest eye will spot glimpses of the leaf filled ruts. In other parts, the trail looks new thanks to 4 wheelers and snowmobiles. Soon after leaving my parent’s lot, the trail passes by a boggy pond. Beavers once had a house here and you can still see old tree trunks gnawed to a pencil point. But now the pond is merely a few deep pools with grass growing in odd places. Ice forms around the edges but much to thin for my tempted foot. After the pond, the trail moves up and on through birches and open woods. It passes through a thick stand of tall pine trees and back again to birch, popular, and maple trees.
I love walking this trail. There are houses near by and some now visible as they encroach on “my” trail. And yet, I can lose myself in the quietness of the wood. Squirrels chatter, small birds chirp, a few old oak leaves, still unwilling to fall to the ground, rustle in the wind. With any luck, a little snow will let me see the tracks of deer, rabbits, a lone dog, a skunk.
Walking this trail feeds my soul and helps me to see that God has made a beautiful world. It stirs the imagination in many ways. I must remember to find ways to see this beauty in Philadelphia.
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Filed under Meditations, Mindfulness
Ponder this: Fosdick on handling limitations
Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world – making the most of one’s best
Attributed to Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1878-1969
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Filed under Great Quotes, Meditations, Mindfulness
Grief brings ‘wisdom through the awful grace of God’
Came across a great quote from a Greek poet this week by watching part of the PBS series on Bobby Kennedy. While Bobby was running for president, MLK was brutally gunned down (4/4/68). RFK had been scheduled to make a speech to a large gathering of African Americans in Indianapolis. Since this time wasn’t an age of the 24 hour news cycle, RFK had to be the bearer of the terrible news to his audience. He spoke for just a few minutes from the heart and connected with his audience by talking about the experience of his own brother’s assassination. Here’s one piece of his speech (if you watch to the end you find the Aeschylus says in the sentence prior to the italics below: He who learns must suffer. So true!):
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
Isn’t this so true? Against our will, the pain of grief brings wisdom and experience. And in the end, we see the grace of God even when we never feel good about the experience.
See this link if you want to read/hear the entire RFK speech: http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/rfk.htm
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Filed under Great Quotes, Meditations, suffering
Consider these thoughts from Mark Twain
I saw this first quote in McCullough’s Truman book (pointed out to me by my lovely wife) so I went looking for confirmation of it on-line and found the other quotes as well:
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
– Note to the Young People’s Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, 1901
Do right and you will be conspicuous.
– Mark Twain, a Biography
Do right for your own sake and be happy in knowing that your neighbor will certainly share in the benefits resulting.
– What Is Man?
See more of Twain at: http://www.twainquotes.com
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Filed under Meditations
What traps the Christian worker?
Ponder these words from Oswald Chambers. If you want the full text, click here. Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live. Never seek after anything other than the approval of God….Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice… Unless the worker lives a life that “is hiden with Christ in God”, he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an anctive, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups.
Chambers is right. We tend to desire spiritual success (either the physical evidence of it or the feeling of it). What we ought to desire is the daily opportunity to submit ourselves to his will.Share this:
Filed under Meditations
Do you despair of your sins?
Most of us struggle with hidden (and sometimes not as hidden as we think) sins. They seem to devour us, cause us to despair, to quit fighting. Nothing seems to work; we feel outflanked and unable to defeat our unholy desires. Watching LOTR: Return of the King, I found King Theoden’s words to his men stirring and useful. His men realize they do not have enough to defeat Mordor’s orcs. They are feeling especially downcast because Aragorn has left to travel the paths of the dead and will not lead them in battle. Theoden looks at his men and says,
No…we cannot defeat them. But we will ride out to meet them in battle none the less.
The power in his voice provides a stirring illustration of the will to fight in a battle that he has no hope of winning. Continue reading
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Filed under Biblical Reflection, Meditations, sin, The Lord of the Rings
Living with the end in sight
A dear member and elder of my church is nearing the end of his life. Frankly, there has been far too much premature death/dying and severe sickness in my circles. In times like this, I find 1 Peter a good book to review. Peter tells it like it is. He reminds us of our hope but doesn’t shrink back from talking of our sordid pasts and suffering futures. Repeatedly, he asks us, in light of the times, to be sober minded. When I was young, I thought foolish thoughts. Now, I am in danger of despair. Both are problematic. Sober minded does not mean depressed. It means that I remember whose I am and what I am made capable of doing. The best passage for me?
The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind [Why?] so that you may pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have [To what end?] to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms [interesting, God’s grace takes on the form of our gifting]. If you speak [assumes sometimes we shouldn’t?], you should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If you serve, you should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 4:7-11
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Filed under Biblical Reflection, Meditations
Musings on Faith and Psychology 