Imago Dei Christian Community

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He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

Jeremiah 17:8

Like the proverbial dust in the wind that inspired so many of my generation, much of my young adult life was spent wandering.  Hitchhiking back and forth across North America, backpacking in Europe, moving from one communal house to another, at one point I calculated that the longest I had stayed in one place over the course of five years was six months.  My life was like a ball bouncing on the pins of a roulette wheel as it spins around.  Eventually the wheel slows down and the ball falls into a slot, and I too finally settled down, got married, raised a family and established a career.  In other words, after years of unsettledness, my life finally became “rooted and established.”

I see a similar process happening in our relationship to prayer.  For many people, prayer is a destination that attracts them from a distance.  They might circle this attraction for years, keeping it topical, reading books to kindle the heart.  As we move in and out of relationship to this hope it’s easy to wonder if we will ever take this invitation seriously.  Will it ever become established in us as we sense it desires to be?

Fortunately, by God’s grace, people do eventually become rooted in the life-discipline of prayer.  Something finally quickens their conviction that this is a call they must respond to more seriously than they have.  Like the ball bouncing on the roulette wheel, they finally fall into its slot.  Prayer then becomes non-negotiable—the most precious pearl of their lives.  Only at this point can it be said that the person is “rooted and established” in the life of prayer.

In the meantime, it is fair to accept that it takes a long time for a sustained discipline of prayer to take root in a person’s life.  Like seed on stony ground, our enthusiasm rises for a season only to disappear again.  Or the seed of prayer simply gets choked in the thorns and thistles of our busy lives.  We should not be discouraged nor surprised by such glaring evidence of our fickle hearts.  God is not deterred.  Slowly and steadily, He is wooing each one of us from a casual to a more committed relationship.  Heaven’s final objective, as Scripture so often depicts, is a relationship more akin to marriage than to dating.

Eventually, through what Jesus calls “the perseverance of noble hearts” (Luke 8:15) the seed of prayer does take root in us and starts to bear its promised fruit.  It shifts from the periphery to become the central focus of our relationship with God.  To it we more consistently return for restoration, and from it we now draw the articulation of our lives.  In other words, by God’s grace, we find ourselves finally established (lit. “made stable”) in a committed relationship to that which our hearts have so long desired.

All true prayer promotes its own progress and increases our power to pray.

P.T. Forsyth

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.     Mat. 6:10

There is no more succinct way of expressing the dynamic union of heaven and earth than in Jesus’ petition to our Father that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  It is a prayer that has absolute implications for all of creation as well as for the minutiae of our individual lives.  Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a 17th century Jesuit spiritual director best summarized this petition when he wrote, “Let God’s will be done; that is the whole of Scripture, the universal law.”

God calls us to conform to the movement of His will.  It is an imperative that comes not from an autocratic need on God’s part but from the loving hope the Creator has for His creatures. For it is only in submission to God’s movement that we ever fully become who we are.  As de Caussade puts it, “saints become saints only by living the life to which they have been called.”

To apply this petition to ourselves—to say to God “Thy will be done in me as it is in heaven”—requires nothing short of the same type of obedience that Jesus demonstrated in His own life when he said, “Whatever I see the Father do I do” (Jn 5:19).  Like Jesus, it is in our submission to the Spirit that God’s particular will becomes evident in our lives.  De Caussade writes of the close relationship between our self-offering and God’s will being manifest.

Obedience to God’s undefined will depends entirely on our surrender to it, our preparedness to do anything, or nothing.  Like a tool that, though it has no power in itself, when in the hands of the craftsman, can be used for any purpose within the range of its capacity and design.  Such souls are like molten metal, filling whatever vessel God chooses to pour them into.

St. Frances de Sales, a spiritual director who lived a century earlier, also spoke of such fluidity in our submission.  In his book, Introduction to the Devout Life, he writes,

We must always be rendering ourselves pliable and tractable to God’s good pleasure, as though we were wax.  A hundred times during the day we should turn our gaze upon God’s loving will, making our own will melt into it.

We also have the contemporary example of Mother Teresa who sought to live her life in perfect submission to God’s will.  Far from passive, such obedience requires the greatest degree of self-control and spiritual focus in its offering.  Mother Teresa speaks of the progressive maturity that a life of submissiveness will entail.  She writes,

The first duty required of souls is self-discipline; the second is self-surrender; the third requires great humility, a humble and willing disposition and a readiness to follow the movement of grace which motivates everything if we simply respond willingly to all its guidance.

These are people who know, each in their own way, what it means to intentionally submit their will to God’s.  And they have all, as de Caussade suggested, become who they are, and born such a wonderful influence on life, as the direct result of their desire for God’s will to be done in them as it is in heaven.

The prayer within all prayer is “Thy will be done.”  My prayer is Thy Will.  Thou didst create it in me.  It is more Thine than mine.

P.T. Forsyth

Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. Mat. 11:29

Paul encouraged the Christians in Ephesus to ”be completely humble and gentle” (Eph. 4:2). Jesus also, from the perfection of His own example, invites us to emulate these same traits. They are evidence of grace in Christians who, because of their faith, are gently poised in relationship to all the circumstances of their lives.

The spirit of gentleness receives life graciously, without need to manipulate or force it to be other than it is. It measures its own engagement with life more minimally than the spiritual footprint left by those who are anxious. We lose the gentle spirit whenever our lives are overly defined by impatience, or by imperatives for the way things should be.

In his book, Spirituality and the Gentle Life, Adrian Van Kaam describes the gentle person as “one in whom there is a friendly accord between themselves and their life situation.” This disposition is most expressive of faith and grace. Van Kaam describes the freedom that gentleness produces in us.

Gentleness is an attitude of letting be, combined with a patient abiding with myself or with the person, task, or problem God calls me to be involved in. This attitude leads to peace and contentment. The gentle person is more free. He can take himself and the world as they are because he feels free to be himself and to let all things be with the same gentility.

Gentleness is also directly related to our experience of God. Aggressiveness of spirit diminishes our congeniality—the trait most needed to live in communion with the humility of God. It is difficult to be open to the gentle spirit of Christ when we find ourselves in an agitated state. Gentleness, therefore, is a prerequisite to remaining in sensate relationship with God. In the spirit of gentleness it becomes easier to pray, to meditate, and to stay attuned to the movements of God’s Spirit. Van Kaam writes,

Gentle reflection proceeds in an atmosphere of leisure and repose. Its quiet presence to divine things is animated by a desire to be at home with God in love—a love that itself is a grace of God.

The more gentle we are in relationship to God’s presence within us, the more hospitable we will seem to the Spirit. As St. John of the Cross noted, “God dwells in some souls as though in His own house; in others He dwells as though a stranger in a strange house, where they do not permit him to do or touch anything.” A gentle soul is more disposed to welcome God’s movement than someone who feels they need to control their spiritual experience.

Jesus presents Himself as gentle and humble of heart. He then invites us to be closely yoked with Him in the character of His life. By imitating Christ in these virtues we prepare an environment for the Lord to more fully dwell in us, as though in His own house.

What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him.

1John 3:2