Monday, March 6, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Jesus is in my heart!
Be merciful just as your heavenly Father is merciful.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you: a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing will be poured into your lap.
Sometimes Jesus’ words sweep through me like a clean spring wind, and I am left undone, cleared out and ready to be filled by something new.
I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me.
Have you ever thought of Jesus not as a destination, but rather as a guide? Because on the road ahead we’re going to encounter weather, potholes, shysters, accidents and traffic. I might never get to where I’m going … unless where I’m going is where I am.
Here are thoughts from Diana Butler Bass and Elizabeth O’Connor:
Elizabeth O’Connor told the story of a Christian community organized around two spiritual journeys—the interior one toward knowing our true self and knowing God, and the second one directed outward into the world to enact God’s justice and love. These two movements comprise the way of Jesus, a continual flow of breath: in, out; in, out; in, out.…
This quest is a mapless journey—there is no single road—the only guides to it are nature, saints, poetry, song, and Spirit. When you dare leave the map behind, Jesus emerges as the road itself and the Light that guides.
What map? I guess that means the dogmas of my faith – what I think I know but haven’t really left behind with Jesus, asking him to sift through and give back to me, simplified and soaked in love. What Jesus gives back to his disciples is a call to forgive and give. No more judging, no more condemnation.
Which I cannot promise to do on my own, dear Lord.
But if Jesus is “the road itself and the Light that guides,” then I can expect I’ll be much more giving and forgiving along this road, guided by this light. Really?
This quest is a mapless journey—there is no single road—the only guides to it are nature, saints, poetry, song, and Spirit. On the mapless journey, all is movement. There is no destination, only the enveloping presence of love.
This is confusing to most of us, grounded in the actual “facts” of our religion and our everyday lives. We are here, and not there. We are not “one” with anyone. Heaven comes later. I go to work, do my job, then come home and watch TV. So if I’m going to walk as “one” with Jesus through my life, I need to look inside myself, as Elizabeth O’Connor tells me, before I do much else.
What’s inside me? Do I dare to look, afraid of what I’ll see? Well sure, but Jesus pretty much promises me that soon I’ll see anew, smiling in surprised self-discovery. Jesus is down there!
The Quakers refer to this as the “inner light”; medieval mystics speak of Jesus likewise.
The conventions of our childhood Christianity generally don’t send us seeking the inner light. Seeking Jesus inside. Or do they? What does the Sunday School teacher ask?
Where is Jesus, she says? And I say, we all say in unison, “In my heart!”
As I grow up and take my place in society, Jesus hasn’t gone anywhere. I’d better start looking in my heart for him again.
(Daniel 9, Psalm 79, John 6, Luke 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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