The Perfection of Love

I once read that no tree is perfect, and yet every tree is perfect.  Now, every time I look at a tree, I see that tree as imperfect and yet perfect.  In the same way, when I was working with a builder to design the "perfect" house, he told me that there was no such thing as the perfect house--and of course, he was right.  The house I now live in is not, in the objective sense, "perfect," and yet it is the perfect house for me. 

My husband is not perfect, but he is the perfect husband for me -- for he fits and overlooks my own imperfections, so I do not have to be perfect around him.  So, too, my children and my siblings and their families.  There is not one among us who is "perfect," thank God, so we can all relax and enjoy being around one another without fear of making mistakes.  We can laugh at our own foolishness and stupidities without fear of ridicule or gossip behind our backs. 

Last year, my daughter gave me a plaque that reads, "Good friends overlook your broken fence and admire your garden."  What a perfect way to say "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins" (I Peter 4:8).

It is my deep love of trees that causes me to see the absolute beauty of each one, no matter how mangled, gnarled, storm-damaged it might be.  When it puts out leaves in the spring, I almost dance for joy, for I no longer see the twisted and even sometimes dying core.  Even those trees I know have not long to live are beautiful in their "old age." 

One of the greatest gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit is love; it is one of the "fruits" or outpourings of the indwelling "Gift of the Father" in us:  the love of God is shed abroad (or poured out) in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), and the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8:6). Now the phrase, "the love of God" actually has two meanings:  it can mean "our love for God Himself," or it can mean "God's own love for His children."  And both meanings are true -- the Holy Spirit in us generates greater and greater love in us for both God Himself and for other people. 

Fortunately, we do not have to wait for our families, friends, and neighbors to 'get their act together' before we love them beyond all measure.  Because of the fruit of the Spirit in us, not only do we love them in their imperfections, but our love, like the love of God, actually brings them to a greater perfection.  We never really overcome our weaknesses, but we grow by leaps and bounds by building on our strengths.  And love, seeing the strength of others, rejoices in them, just as I rejoice in the beauty of each tree, no matter how many 'imperfections' it may have. 

Yesterday, our neighborhood hosted a community garage sale.  As we sat together under my shaded carport, we all talked and laughed together in love.  The Spirit of God brought us together in love, no matter how many imperfections existed up and down the block.  No one considers him/herself better than any of the rest, so we can all live together in peace, will all of our idiosyncrasies and foibles. 

I see trees, and skies of blue...

and I say to myself, "What a wonderful world!"

God's Secret Influence

We approach "religion," and Christianity in particular with a set of beliefs or doctrines to which we must adhere.  But what I love about Jesus is His "Come and See" approach.  When He encountered Matthew at the money-table, He simply said, "Come."  When He met Andrew, He said, "Come and see."  He taught the multitudes, healed the sick, and told the apostles to go into the whole world -- all before there was a set of beliefs to follow.

Before theology developed, something happened to people --something like an electric current running through their souls-- that adhered them to Jesus Christ.  Should we believe today that this current no longer flows from the heart of God to us?  Should we believe that God's secret influence, as C.S. Lewis calls it, no longer exists to draw people to Jesus Christ?

Seventeen people have come to RCIA this year to investigate the Catholic Church.  Three of them are "Cradle Catholics" who have never left the church, but who feel "something is missing," in their own words.  They want to know what they are doing -- but in my mind, they want the Power and Presence of God in their lives.  Their practice of religion is leaving them cold, and they want the warmth that is given only by the Holy Spirit, the "Secret Influence," the "electric current" that runs through our souls and changes everything.

Fourteen others have come from different faiths--Baptist, Methodist, Mormon, etc.  They have come for whatever reasons they cannot name, as did Emilie Griffin in her classic Turning.  Something happened to them, something they cannot name but cannot resist either.  "Theology" follows to give a name, a word, to their experience -- to explain that mysterious force that embraces and fills the entire universe.

In Jesus' day, there were many non-Jews who "knew" Him and came to Him--the Roman centurian, the Syrio-Phoenician woman, the Samaritan woman at the well.  Today, throughout the entire world, in every nation and language, there are people who are God's children by His 'secret influence,' though they could not name Jesus Christ or the theology of Christianity.  When someone gives them the "Name," or the "Word," their hearts leap for joy in recognition at what they already know. 

God is so much greater than our minds and world-systems and theologies.  He knows those who belong to Him, and He knows how to influence their hearts and minds toward Him.  I think we can trust that He has more options than we can guess toward salvation, joy, and peace.

Understanding the "Fear of the Lord"

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.  No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.  None of the rulers of this age understood it,...but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

 

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.  For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?  In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God....This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. 

 

The man without the spirit [i.e., "the natural man"] does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned....but we have the mind of Christ (I Cor. 2: 6-16).

 

Many, many years ago, I puzzled over the phrase so prevalent in Scripture -- "The Fear of the Lord."  This quality seemed to be the gateway for so much else that I wanted:  "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," for example.  I desperately wanted wisdom, but wasn't so sure about the "fear of the Lord," whatever that was.  I had never been afraid of God, and I sure didn't want to start now, this late in life.  But whatever "Fear of the Lord" might mean, I wanted that.

 

So I prayed, "O Lord, show me what is meant by 'Fear of the Lord.'  I want the beginning of wisdom, and I trust You to show me how to receive it."  Of course, the answer to that prayer came so slowly and gradually that I hardly realized it was being answered.  It was only years later, in hindsight, that I came to understand that Fear of the Lord is not, and cannot be, an intellectual concept, but an attitude of the heart.  In order to understand it, we must experience it, and then we know it deep within ourselves.

 

Many people want to define "fear of the Lord" as awe or amazement, and that is a start for the "natural man," who cannot grasp the things of God, but it does not really express the experience of Fear of the Lord.  Jesus, for example, "feared God," but His "fear" went so far beyond awe and amazement that those words don't even touch the reality of His love and devotion, His total absorption in the relationship of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  I can be in awe and amazement at a sunset or the flight of a bird or the ways of a child---but that "relationship" does not begin to express "Fear of the Lord." 

 

The closest I can come to expressing the meaning of this phrase is in deep, very close, and lasting relationships.  I am so grateful to my husband for his everyday gifts to me that I don't want to do anything that he would not like.  I am aware of and sensitive to his thoughts and feelings, and I want to uphold, to be in union with, his desires.  I don't want to go against his wishes to accomplish my own will.  One of my children had this same kind of sensitivity toward me.  She used to watch my face to see if I was happy or sad or angry.  She always wanted "my face to shine upon her," and nothing made her more happy than to see me happy.  Nothing scared her more than to see me angry or upset. 

 

Once we enter into relationship with the "Abba" that is revealed to us by the Spirit of Jesus in us, we want nothing more than to live in very close companionship and union with Him.  We hunger to know His thoughts, and we wait for His direction in our lives.  We "fear" to walk away from so great and precious a relationship, for in Him is our very Life.  He is all we need and all we want.  We may sin, but we run back to Him like the Prodigal Son, knowing that we cannot live in the dregs of the world. 

 

The "natural man" will never grasp the "Fear of the Lord," because it describes a relationship, a union, that seems impossible to man -- unless he is born again of the Spirit of God:  And when He, the Comforter, comes, He will teach you all things, even the very deep things of God.  Now you cannot bear the teaching, but later, you will understand (a composite quote from the Book of John and I Cor. 2).





It's Not So Difficult

Proverbs, Chapter 2:

My son, if you accept my words

and store up my commands within you,

turning your ear to wisdom

and applying your heart to understanding,

 

and if you call out for insight

and cry aloud for understanding,

and if you look for it as silver

and search for it as for hidden treasure,

 

then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the [experiential] knowledge of God.

 

For the Lord gives wisdom,

and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

 

He holds victory in store for the upright,

he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,

for he guards the course of the just

and protects the way of his faithful ones.

 

Then you will understand what is right and just

and fair---every good path.

For wisdom will enter your heart,

and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

 

Discretion will protect you,

and understanding will guard you.

 

Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men,

from men whose words are perverse,

who leave the straight paths

to walk in dark ways,

who delight in doing wrong

and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,

whose paths are crooked

and who are devious in their ways....

 

Thus you will walk in the ways of good men

and keep to the paths of the righteous.

For the upright will live in the land,

and the blameless will remain in it;

but the wicked will be cut off from the land,

and the unfaithful will be torn from it.

 

Those who walk in the way of the Lord know the truth of Jesus' words:  My yoke is light and My burden easy.  It is not difficult to "walk in the ways of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous."  Actually, it is a matter of "accepting my words and storing up my commands within you," as the psalm says in the beginning.  John says it this way:  Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God (1:12). 

 

"Receiving Christ" is the same as "Accepting my words and storing up my commands within you."  We accept Jesus within us, as did Mary at the word of the angel, and allow Him to dwell within us to the glory of God.  He will re-arrange the furniture in our souls to make a fit habitation for the Trinity, for the Spirit, the Son, and the Father to dwell within us. 

 

Humanism says "We...;"  Christianity says "He...."  That is the difference.  "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives within me to the glory of God."  We no longer have to "do, and do, and do," as Isaiah says, but He will do in us all that is necessary. 

 

"Faith" is simply accepting what God says, and storing up His Word within our souls, turning our hearts to wisdom and applying them to understanding.  Then we will begin to experience the indwelling Presence and Power of God.  When we say with Mary, "Be it done unto me according to Your Word," He does everything else necessary to our salvation and presence in the world.

 

Jesus says, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink,.... and out of his belly will flow streams of living water."  As we drink from the Rock, as we store up His words within us, we overflow with life-- and the water of life flows out of us to those around us.  We don't have to "do" it; He does it all in us. 

 

That is why I fell in love with Jesus so many years ago; I was tired of trying (and continually failing) to do the right thing--even to being a good mother.  I found my strength to be too feeble to accomplish even the smallest tasks of life -- but when I broke down and allowed Him to begin living within me, He surprised me every single day with His strength, His wisdom, His protection, His ability to guide and teach me in righteousness. 

 

Do you know what it means to have The Good Shepherd in charge of your life?  It is joy unspeakable; it is safety and protection; it is companionship that never fails; it is knowledge of the Truth; it is knowing the Father of heaven and earth -- and it's not so difficult as we imagine it to be!

"The Great River"

Now I, like a rivulet from her stream,

Channeling the waters into a garden,

Said to myself, “I will water my plants;

My flower beds I will drench. 

And suddenly this rivulet of mine became a river,

This stream of mine, a sea.

Thus do I send my teachings forth shining like the dawn,

To become known far off.

Thus do I pour out instruction like prophecy

And bestow it on generations to come (Sirach 24:28-31).

 

The name "Mississippi" is derived from the French spelling of an Indian word meaning "Great River."  In 1541, Hernando DeSoto, the first European to reach the Mississippi River, called it Rio del Espiritu Santo, ("River of the Holy Spirit"). 

 

Perhaps the Great River reminded him of the passage from Sirach 24 -- "In Praise of Wisdom."  Wisdom, "coming forth from the mouth of the Most High," ... "overflows, like the Phison...like the Tigris in the days of the new fruits.  It runs over, like the Euphrates, with understanding, like the Jordan at harvest time.  It sparkles like the Nile with knowledge, the Gihon at vintage time.  The first man never finished comprehending wisdom, nor will the last succeed in fathoming her.  For deeper than the sea are her thoughts; her counsels than the great abyss."  The Mississippi River, powerful, deep, rich, and overflowing its banks, watering all the land around it and depositing rich alluvial soils for crops along its banks, may have been to DeSoto like the Gift of Wisdom/ Holy Spirit flowing from the mouth of God. 

 

In 1673, Pere Marquette, traveling with the French explorers down the Great River, proposed calling it "River of the Immaculate Conception."  There may have been a reason for his proposal in the origin of the Mississippi, which we know the French explorers discovered.  The source of the Great River is Lake Itasca, Minnesota.  Now the name "Itasca" is a combination of two Latin words:  the last 4 letters of the Latin "Veritas" (Truth), + the first 2 letters of the Latin "head" (or "source"), which is caput.  So the name "Itasca" means "The Source of Truth."  The Mighty Mississippi begins with a spring--Source of Truth---, becomes a lake, and flows out to water and divide half of the United States of America.  It provides nourishment, transportation, industry, and refreshment for half of the United States before it empties into the Gulf of Mexico.  The Immaculate Conception of Mary allowed her to received in its entirety the Word of God, the Source of Truth, which flows out into the entire world. 

 

After comparing wisdom with all the sparkling and overflowing waters with which he was familiar, Sirach says that he channeled a "rivulet" from the Book of Wisdom into his own garden, to water his own plants -- and suddenly, this rivulet became a river, and then a sea, sending forth its teachings like the dawn, overflowing to future generations. 

 

The Great Mississippi River is a living analogy for us who live close to it and even by its overflowing waters.  Everything grows in its rich alluvial soil.  So, too, is the Gift of Wisdom from the mouth of the Most High.  Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.  If we channel just a small stream of Wisdom from the Source of Truth, it will water not only our own gardens, but flow out from us like a mighty river.  This work is not our own, but the work of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, overflowing out of us, into the thirsty world around us.  Jesus told Nicodemus that we cannot understand the path of the wind -- where it comes from or where it goes.  He spoke of the work of the Holy Spirit in us.  We cannot control it, direct it, or even predict what it will do.  All we can do is to allow it to spring up in us as the Source of Truth and allow it to do its work in us.

Washington's Warning

America was founded on prayer.  Therefore, the removal of prayer from its public life was a central part of its fall from God.  A nation that runs away from prayer will ultimately find itself in desperate need of it (The Harbinger, p. 223).

 

Immediately upon the inauguration of George Washington at Federal Hall in New York City, then our nation's capital, he led the new Congress to a small chapel in the city for public prayer for the blessings of God upon the newly-established nation.  In his inaugural address, Washington had said, "The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself hath ordained." (April 30, 1789)

 

Then Washington and all his newly-sworn-in cabinet and officers walked to St. Paul's Chapel to pray.  St. Paul's Chapel is at Ground Zero today, and it is the only structure that was preserved when the twin towers exploded.  It became the center of emergency coordination, the resting place for the first responders, etc.  The wrought-iron fence of the church yard was covered in concrete dust and debris, as was the church itself and the surrounding areas.  But the church stood.

 

And Washington's statue, the memorial of that first inauguration, still stands today, with his hand outstretched to lay on the Bible, outside the New York Stock Exchange, the site of Federal Hall, where he took the oath of office.  I think the words of his inaugural address are bearing fruit today. 

 

In Isaiah 9, the prophet says this:

 

The Lord has send a message against Jacob;

it will fall on Israel.

All the people will know it--

Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria--

who say with pride

and arrogance of heart,

"The bricks have fallen down,

but we will rebuild with dressed stone;

the fig trees have been felled,

but we will replace them with cedars."

But the Lord has strengthened Rezin's foes against them

and has spurred their enemies on....

 

But the people have not returned to him who struck them,

nor have they sought the Lord Almighty (9:8-13).

 

Now here is the really scary part.  On the morning after the twin towers fell, America issued its response in the form of a joint resolution of Congress.  The Senate majority leader summed up the nation's response to the calamity:

 

...there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that I think speaks to all of us at times like this...

"The bricks have fallen down,

but we will rebuild with dressed stone;

The fig trees have been felled,

But we will replace them with cedars." 

 (Washington file: Sept. 12, 2001)

 

Without realizing it, the Senate majority leader was publicly pronouncing judgment on America!  He did not realize the context of Isaiah's quotation, so he thought he was inspiring America even while announcing our coming destruction.  He did not see that the words he quoted had been said with "pride and arrogance of heart."

 

Six days later, when the New York Stock Exchange re-opened, it suffered the greatest loss in its history; it was an aftershock of 9/11.

 

Three years later, on the anniversary of 9/11, the vice-presidential candidate would speak the same words, to be followed in 2008 with the total collapse of Wall Street and its financial institutions.  On February 24, 2009, with the nation's economy in freefall, Obama comes to the joint session of Congress one month after his inauguration and says this:

 

While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this--WE WILL REBUILD.

 

[The Lord has send a message against Jacob; it will fall on Israel.  All the people will know it.]

 

And now, still not understanding Isaiah 9:10, this President wants to strike at Syria (Rezin's foes).

 

I wonder if anyone knows what happened to Israel after Isaiah's prophecies.  I wonder if anyone sees what is coming to the United States as a result of this current situation.  Both the Blessed Mother in Medjugore and the Pope have recently warned us that this Middle-East situation will affect the entire world.  Both have called for prayer and fasting to avert the danger.   But, given the recent history of America, given that the blood of our aborted innocents has been crying from the ground for well over 30 years now, I cannot be hopeful that America will heed the warning George Washington gave us in his inaugural address. 

 

Israel ignored both Isaiah and Jeremiah to its utter destruction.  Can we afford to do the same?

The Rhythm of Prayer

Last week, I wrote about three 13-year-old students who were trying out for the basketball team at their school.  After an hour of lower-body workouts, their legs were giving out on them, and the students began to fall over.  All three boys were eventually hospitalized with a condition called rhabdomyolysis, or muscle breakdown.  Proteins released by muscle cells begin to clog the kidneys, and urine turns as brown as coffee.

The human personality is comprised of four essential components:  physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.  The fundamental pulse of life is rhythm, or balance, in all four dimensions between activity, or expenditure of energy, and rest, or recovery of energy.  When we fail to respect the natural rhythms of life, we fail to act with our full potential.  In our culture, we tend to assume that we can spend energy indefinitely in some dimensions--the mental and emotional-- and that we can be effective while spending little or no energy in the physical and spiritual dimensions of our person.  Like the 13-year-old students who collapsed physically, we often flatline spiritually.

Both athletes and business entrepreneurs who are successful report that while they are extremely focused, they also build in time for energy renewal.  These people build into their lives rituals that allow them to disengage from their own focused energy expenditure and to renew their energy.  Martin Moore-Ede, a physiologist who has made a study of our circadian rhythms, says this:

At the heart of the problem is a fundamental conflict between the demands of our man-made civilization and the very design of the human brain and body...Our bodies were designed to hunt by day, sleep at night and never travel more than a few dozen miles from sunrise to sunset.  Now we work and play at all hours, whisk off by jet to the far side of the globe, make life or death decisions or place orders on foreign stock exchanges in the wee hours of the morning.  The pace of technological innovation is outstripping the ability of the human race to understand the consequences.  We are machine-centered in our thinking ---focused on the optimization of technology and equipment ---rather than human-centered---focused on the optimization of human alertness and performance.--from The Twenty-Four Hour Society, p.6)

 

Reading The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz has given me some insight into why people often give up on prayer, or at least pray only when they are desperate.  I think maybe when we come to pray, we think we have to expend a lot of energy on prayer, and we fail to realize the part of the ritual of prayer that renews our energy.  So our prayer eventually peters out -- we spend energy; we get nothing back; our spirits slow down and soon stop working altogether.

 

We tend to think of prayer as what we do -- but actually, prayer is simply opening our spirits to God's energy at work in us -- renewing us, strengthening us, guiding us, teaching us.  The original meaning of the word enthusiasm is "God within:"  en-theos.  We fail to sense God's energy, His renewing, strengthening, guiding, teaching action in our lives because we leave out the second part of prayer -- reading Scripture.  So, since we seem to get nothing from our prayer-time, we give up, thinking our efforts quite useless.  In 1604, Dr. John Rainolds, President of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, petitioned King James I for an English translation of the Bible:

 

...the knowledge of God is the water of life...True divinity cannot be learned unless we frame our hearts and minds wholly to it.  The knowledge of God must be learned of God.  We have to use two means, prayer and the reading of the Holy Scriptures, prayer for ourselves to talk with God and reading to hear God talk with us...We must diligently give ourselves to reading and meditation of the Holy Scriptures.

 

If we fail to build into our prayer time the rhythm of reading Scripture, our prayer will soon become weak and stressful, just as our bodies become weak and stressed from over-training and not enough recovery time.  Reading the Scriptures allows God the space to enter our thoughts, our emotions, even our physical bodies.  It is our "recovery time" as whole persons; it is our source of Divine Energy, as well as of Truth. 

 

We do not need to read for information, the way we read other texts; we need to read for inspiration, for listening, for absorbing what it is the Spirit of God wants to teach us.  If we do not know where to begin, we should begin with prayer for direction -- and then trust that we will be shown what we need for each day's demand.