Be Merciful - From Luke 6

Everyone has enemies.  Oh, they may not be like the arch-nemesis of a superhero in an action movie.  They might not even be like a playground bully.  In adult life, playground bullies take different forms: antagonists in the workplace, adversaries within families, and even vainglorious saboteurs within your house of worship.   The way I deal with my enemies reveals the degree to which Christ dwells in my heart--or, rather, the degree to which I'm abiding in Christ.  I can choose to allow them to disturb my inner peace, which is a path of contention.  Assuming that they are the aggressor and I am the target (the only position a child of God should be in, when conflict is present), and assuming that I resist them on their own battleground, I am bound to lose.  The fact that they are an aggressor means that they are an aggressor-type personality.  While they are used to conflict, as a Christian I should be so un-used to conflict that its ways are foreign to me.  So engaging in a battle on unfamiliar territory would be devastating to me, were I to engage in it.

Instead, Jesus teaches another way.  He tells me to pray for my enemies.  He says I should show mercy.  Do good to those who persecute me.  That's radically different from the way the world responds to bullies.  Jesus says, "Resist not evil...turn the other cheek."  If I'm going to follow Jesus' way, then I'm going to have to train myself to think differently.  I'm going to have to realize that, as Simon Weil says:

We live in a world of unreality and dreams.  To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.  A transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions.  It is a transformation analogous to that which takes place in the dusk of evening on a road, where we suddenly discern as a tree what we had at first seen as a stooping man; or where we suddenly recognize as a rustling of leaves what we thought at first was whispering voices.  We see the same colors; we hear the same sounds, but not in the same way.

To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul.  Such consent is love.  The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor; the face turned toward matter is love of the order of the world, or love of the beauty of the world which is the same thing.  (from Waiting for God, by Simone Weil) 

When I take myself out of the center, I begin to love my enemies.  Instead, they become my neighbors and my friends.  Absenting myself from conflict, I can find beauty in those who oppose me.  I can see God in them, too.

Today, I invite you to a meditation using the Protestant prayer beads.  As you repeat these words, let them soak into your spirit.  When you complete the meditation with the Benedictory bead, understand that just as power went out from Jesus to bring healing to everyone, so His power flows from you, bringing healing to your friends and enemies.

A MEDITATION WITH ECUMENICAL PRAYER BEADS:
(Click here to get your own)

Invitatory - vv. 27-28
I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,  bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Weeks - v. 36
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Cruciform - v. 37
You will be children of the Most High.

Benedictory - v. 19
Power came out from him and healed them all.

My Soul Waits in Silence

For God alone my soul waits in silence;

from Him comes my salvation.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken...

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,

for my hope is from him.

He only is my rock and my salvation; 

my fortress, I shall not be shaken...

Once God has spoken,

twice have I heard this:

that power belongs to God,

and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.

Psalm 62.1-2, 5-6, 11 ESV

I meet a lot of people who for one reason or another are waiting in silence.  Some are in hospitals, waiting for their bodies to heal.  Others are in nursing homes, waiting for someone to come visit them.  Still others are widows or widowers, advanced in years and unable to frequently leave their homes.  All these people are learning something about waiting in silence.

Unfortunately, it often takes something like this in order to make people slow down, rest, and wait in silence.  However, the psalmist who did not find himself in any of these situations says that he waits in silence.  By practicing the presence of God in times of quiet rest, he finds hope, salvation, and refuge.  Because he does this, he is not shaken by the storms of life.

Twice in this psalm, David says that he waits in silence.  Twice also he uses the Hebrew word selah, which means "pause and reflect."  It is no coincidence, then, that twice David says that he heard from God.  In other words, the more you wait in silence, the more you hear from God.  Sometimes God speaks to you of His great power, and other times He declares His steadfast love.  But it is in those moments of silence that you hear.  

"Be still, and know that I am God," says the Lord (Ps 46.10 ESV).  When we allow times of stillness in our lives, when we draw the curtain on the world's distractions, when we rest in God alone, we find our hope.  I pray that today you will take a few moments to wait in silence.  It's only by doing so that you can hear from the God of steadfast love.

Pray Thyself in Me

And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don't know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.

(Romans 8.26 NLT)

Weakness.   Submission.  Silence.  Most of us don't like words like this, because they indicate an inability to perform or act on our own behalf.  Yet, the apostle Paul said, "I delight in weaknesses...for when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12.10 NIV)."  Paul knew that there's serenity in silence and submission.  He knew the wonder of weakness.  He knew the abandon felt by the spirit in moments of simple trust, and the freedom found in not needing to pray in "the right way."  

As a Pharisee, Paul had been trained in the "right way" to do everything.  As Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof, "We have traditions for everything: how to sleep, how to eat, how to work, how to wear clothes."  But the Spirit taught Paul that all our striving leads to losing.  The more we expect of ourselves in prayer, the more we fail.  There is a limit to our human ability, and a limit to our understanding.  But God makes up the differences, if we let Him.

In prayer, we must abandon our own desires and surrender them to God.  Rather than praying for the things that we want, we must pray for the things that God wants.  This would be difficult, were it not for the Holy Spirit.  For what do we know of God's desires?  1 Corinthians 2.9-12 (NLT) says: 

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.  But it was to us that God revealed these things by His Spirit.  For the Spirit searches out everything and shows us God's deep secrets.  No one can know a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit, and no one can know God's thoughts except God's own Spirit.  And we have received God's Spirit (not the world's spirit) so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

Weakness and submission mean not trying to figure out what God wants, but waiting for God to reveal His will to our silent hearts.  When we settle in to God's Spirit, when we allow ourselves to "be still and know," then God's Spirit begins to pray through us.  Then, it is no longer we who pray, but the Spirit of God who prays in us.  Francois Fenelon put it this way:.

Francois Fenelon

"Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest what I need....I simply present myself before thee, I open my heart to thee.  Behold my needs which I know not myself.  Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy Will.  Teach me to pray.  Pray thyself in me."

"Pray thyself in me."  What freedom!  What abandon!  What simple trust!  How would it be if our prayers no longer bore the check marks of a "to do" list that a wife gives to her husband, but instead looked more like that wife simply sitting in peace with him, holding his hand?  

Jesus' prayers ("Not my will, but thine be done") were yielded to the Father--how unlike the demands that we place on our Lord when we expect Him to do our will!  Instead of our way, Jesus' way seems to be "Pray thyself in me."  Today, I invite you NOT to pray--but to yield to the Spirit, and let Him pray for you.  Simply rest in God, and be the prayer that He places within you.