Weekly Meditations

Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?  Job 2:10

The book of Job begins with the same rhetorical question that it ends with— “shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”  To discern God’s sovereignty in all our circumstances is a mature form of wisdom.  And the submissive posture that it implies suggests a trusting faith whereby God’s goodness is not solely measured by our own sense of personal loss or gain.  We are prepared to accept both from His hand.

Consider how this applies to your own experience of life.  How do you relate to loss and gain in your life?  How do you interpret God’s hand in your changing circumstances, or even in the changing vitality of spirit that you feel from day to day?

On some days we feel strong, and on others we feel weak.  For a season we might wax courageous, only to find ourselves, in another season, weak and plagued by doubt and fear.  We enjoy times of uncanny grace when all things seem to be going our way, and then are dismayed when everything seems to fall apart.  We naturally accept the one set of experiences as from God, and yet immediately reject the other as not part of the divine plan.  But might even our difficult situations be an invitation to a maturity of faith that is more disposed to “find God in all things?”

When I go from one success to another I am quick to acknowledge the Lord’s hand in this.  But as soon as something is taken away from me, I am just as quick to assume that this is not from God.  Does the same Lord who gives me life, not also take it away?  If I bless God when I feel strong and attribute to His purposes when I am inspired to faith, should I not also bless Him when I am weak and uninspired?  Does not the same God allow for both strength and weakness in my life?  On some days my thinking can be very sharp while on others it is dull.  Some of my prayer times are very focused whereas others wander aimlessly.  Should I not recognize and accept the Lord’s purposes in the ways He limits me, as much as in the ways He opens my path?  If I praise God for giving me seasons of spiritual passion and zeal should I not also thank His wisdom for the fallow times, even if these are the result of my own negligence?  Should I not welcome the discomfort that my waywardness produces in me as a sign of God’s grace?

As we acknowledge the Lord in all our ways we are more apt to find God in all things.  Though we do what we can to prosper, faith always presumes that the loving hand of God is secretly at work for the good of His purposes in all the ebbs and flows of our lives.

Consider the following prayer.  Can you welcome these words as an invitation to a more contemplative posture of faith?  They will encourage a greater dependence on God as the One who gives to each, according to what is needed for His good purposes in their lives.

A Prayer, In All Circumstances Of Our Life

If I am weak, I will accept the life You give me.
If I am ineffective, I will accept the life You give me.
If I am uninspired, unmotivated and unable to save myself,
I will accept the life You give me.

I will not presume upon the strength I have
but will accept the spirit I receive each day
as the very measure of life You grant me.

I will welcome even the poverty of my spirit
and offer it as an instrument through which
Your purposes unfold in and through my life.

The Lord gives, and the Lord withholds
Blessed be the name of the Lord.

The Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2Cor. 12:9-10

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?  Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.   Mat. 7:16-17

When you are feeling anxious about life it is always good to ask yourself what spirit has led you to the state of soul you now find yourself in.  Is it a spirit of faith or one of fear that is prompting you to think, interpret, act or react as you are?  We will have a very different experience of life depending on which spirit we choose to follow.  The voice of the shepherd will lead us to a healthy state of soul, whereas the voice of a stranger will usually lead us to a state of spiritual dis-ease.

Jesus gives us a very immediate means of discerning the origin of whichever spirit we are following when He teaches that “you will know a tree by its fruit.” By observing the effect a spirit has on us—whether it produces figs or thistles—we will soon know if it is from God or not.  And the more attentive we are to its effects, the more we will be in a position to choose whether to continue following this spirit or to heed Jesus’ teaching that His sheep “will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” (John 10:5-6).

You will know a spirit by its fruit. If you were to write a list of the “symptoms” you experience when you are in a spirit of either faith or fear what would it look like?  Here is a quick itemization I made for myself.  How would you answer these questions for yourself?

What effect does fear have on you? When I am operating from a motivation based on the spirit of fear I usually feel anxious.  I tend to obsess and worry more.  I feel alone.  I live with more dread of the future.  I try to overly control my situation.  I tend to experience my life more as a burden or as a problem that needs to be solved.  I am less patient with myself and with others.  I tend to over-react in my interpretation and responses to life.  I am less inclined to trust.  I feel more self-protective.  I tend to interpret myself and my circumstances more negatively.

What effect does faith have on you? When I am operating from a motivation that is based on the spirit of faith I feel more free.  I feel more inclined to risk.  I receive life more as a gift than as a problem.  I feel more trusting.  I am more gentle with myself and with life in general.  I feel more at peace regarding things I can’t see or understand.  I am more detached and less reactive to my circumstances.  I feel a greater sense of abandonment and courage.  I am more willing to wait and see how things unfold rather than prematurely respond to my limited sense of what is happening.  I am more able to trust God with the outcome of my circumstances.  I am more hopeful about the future.

Recognizing, by the effects it has on you, the character of the spirit you have been following will help you to now choose more intelligently whether to continue following this spirit or not.  Is it the voice of the shepherd or that of a “stranger” that has led you to the state of soul you find yourself in?  My sheep will hear my voice and they will not follow the voice of a stranger We are wise, as the apostle John teaches us, to “test the spirits to see that they are from Christ” (1Jn. 4:1).  As we do so, we will be all the more shielded from the anxious effects of the stranger’s voice.

Above all guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
Prov. 4:23

He leads me beside the quiet waters.  Psalm 23:2

For the Israelite, the essence of good life is measured by the quality of menuha it enjoys.  Menuha means “tranquility.”   Psalm 23, for instance, translates this word as “the quiet waters.”  Menuha is what the practice of Sabbath promises to bring to our lives—still waters which restore our souls.

The Sabbath ennobles not only the soul, but also the body by giving us rest in which to recover our sense of primal truth.  Physical comfort and delight are a big part of the experience of such restoration.  As the ancient Midrash Tehillim counsels us,

Call the Sabbath a delight: a delight to the soul and a delight to the body.  Sanctify the Sabbath by choice meals, by beautiful garments.  Delight your soul with pleasure and this very pleasure will reward you with life.

Because such opportunities for physical and spiritual delight await us each week, we are to eagerly prepare ourselves for our Sabbath day.  We anticipate it, and welcome it as we would welcome someone we love who was coming to visit us.   The Rabbi Shimon, in the first century, wrote of the Sabbath customs of his day saying,

For the Israelites the day is a living presence and, when it arrives, they feel as if a guest has come to see them. And, surely, a guest who comes to pay a call in friendship or respect must be given a dignified welcome.

On this day—a day the Lord Himself calls holy—we have opportunity to meet with God in a special way   And the way we anticipate this meeting can be an expression of the very relationship we desire to have with God’s presence.

In some Jewish traditions, the Sabbath is also spoken of as a bride.  It impresses that we are, in a sense, to espouse the seventh day. The root of the Hebrew word le-kadesh, which we translate as “sanctify,” means “to betroth.”  As another ancient rabbinical Midrash states,

Just as a groom is dressed in his finest garments, so is a man on the Sabbath day dressed in his finest garments; just as a man rejoices all the days of the wedding feast, so does man rejoice on the Sabbath; just as the groom does no work on his wedding day, so does a man abstain from work on the Sabbath day.

These ancient traditions depict something of the joyful quality of relationship that is ours to anticipate each week as the sacred day approaches us.  Consider how you might look forward to your next Sabbath, whatever day you have put aside to welcome God in your week.  How can you treat this day as a special guest that you look forward to hosting into your house?  How might you more fully anticipate the goodness that God has prepared for you to receive in your coming day of rest?

If you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable…, then you will find your joy in the LORD.

Isa. 58:13-14

I want to test the sincerity of your love.
2Cor. 8:8

In his book, Drinking From A Dry Well, Thomas Green SJ suggests that there are three stages to a growing life of prayer that can be defined according to what we most seek in our relationship with God.  These three stages can also be understood in terms of the natural evolution of love—from a desire for knowledge, to one for experience, and then to a growing acceptance of the need for transformation.

In the courtship stage we mostly seek knowledge of God.  As Green states, “We cannot love what we do not know.  Thus the first stage in any love relationship is getting to know the person we are drawn to.”  But facts about a person do not, in themselves,  constitute a relationship.  Even our feelings about God can, at this stage, be misleading.  As Green says,

There may well be infatuation at the beginning of a relationship.  But infatuation is not love, precisely because we do not really know the object of our infatuation.  We are in love with our own romantic notions of the person rather than with the reality of the person before us.

As love progresses beyond the “getting-to-know” stage, we find in ourselves a growing desire for intimacy with the object of our love.  Green calls this the “honeymoon” phase.  He writes,

The courtship eventually leads to the honeymoon.  In terms of what we now seek in our relationship with God, we note a transition from knowledge to experience.  The relationship moves from the head (knowing) to the heart (experiencing, loving).  We no longer seek insight about God as much as the joy of being with the One we love.

As our desire for intimacy with God grows we might also find that we are not as inclined to reflect or meditate on the Scriptures as we did before.  Instead, we are more drawn to the presence of God, to simply sit before Him and bask in His love.  As pleasant as this stage is though, it too must evolve to a maturity beyond itself.  As Green says,

This whole purpose of the “getting to know” stage of meditative prayer is to lay a solid foundation for love.  At the “honeymoon” stage, it will be good to remember that this too will eventually come to an end, because what looks like true love on the honeymoon still contains a great deal of self-love.  I love you, yes; but to a large extent this is because you fulfill me and all my desires.

Unfulfilled needs are, of course, a valid reason for the early stages of relationship.  As Green would say, “There is real growth in discovering that I cannot fulfill myself, that I need to go out of myself in order to find my own happiness.”  But this stage is still not true love since my “love” is focused primarily on my own needs, my own fulfillment.  A mature relationship will wean us from love that begins and ends with me, to one that has its source and goal in the other person.  And this weaning will often feel like a loss compared to the subjective delights we once knew.  Green puts it this way,

When the honeymoon ends, we have to come to terms with the ordinary days that do not always make us feel good and fulfilled.  We then begin to realize the true meaning of the “better or worse” clause of the marriage vows.  In the “better” we learn the joy of loving; in the “worse” we learn how to love unselfishly, not because I feel good about it, but because the other’s happiness and well-being are important to me.

So, if in the first stages of love we seek a growing knowledge of God’s love.  And in the second stage we long to rest in the experience of that love.   In this third stage we find ourselves joyfully submitting to the transformation that love invites us to.  No longer satisfied with only insight or experience, we now give ourselves more fully to the transforming work of Christ’s love in us.  It is a love that is now rooted in the Other.  And it is at this stage that we finally discover what love’s objective has been all along—to fashion us to Itself, in order that we might then become Its instrument in the lives of others.

The beauty of submitting to the Potter’s molding is that the transformation God works in me also benefits others.  If I allow the Lord to transform me I can be a more effective instrument of his love—what Ignatius calls “an instrument shaped to the contours of the hand of God.”

–Thomas Green, Drinking from a Dry Well

You show that you are a letter from Christ,…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 2Cor. 3:3

In the first week of the Ignatian Exercises we are invited to reflect on the story of our lives, asking God to help us recognize signs of His presence with us through times of consolation as well as those of desolation. This exercise is sometimes called a “graced history.” It is, in a sense, an expanded version of the Awareness Examen applied not only to our day, but to our whole life.

A graced history is an opportunity to examine our lives more objectively, as narratives in which God’s grace is the principle actor. It is not so much our own story that we consider, but the story of God’s initiatives in our life. As such it provides a unique opportunity to appreciate the many ways that God has encouraged our seeking Him over the course of our lives. Listening to someone else’s “graced history” can also be a helpful exercise and I could encourage facilitators of Imago Dei groups to explore this as another resource for your time together.

Fr. John English S.J., who helped develop the idea of a graced history as part of the Spiritual Exercises offered at Loyola House asks, “if the Exercises are mainly an invitation to see ourselves as “the Beloved of God” where do we go to find evidence of that truth?” For most of us, it is through our own life story that we come to discover the experience of being loved by God. Fr. John reflects on the experience of his own graced history saying, “My life story is a unique story. And, in my unique life there is a unique expression of God’s love that I must come to more fully appreciate.”

Just as the Hebrew people were often reminded of their history in terms of the Exodus, so we come to know our own history in terms of God’s grace. John English comments,

When I interpret the events of my life from the viewpoint of God’s love I see that my life is an experience of the grace of being loved. And this applies even to the shadow side of my life. It’s not just in moments of crisis that God loves me, but God is always there, loving me with benevolence, compassion and mercy. My whole life is a graced experience in the sense that God is present with me in all of the events of my life.

We sometimes trace our life story according to our work history, our health history, our relationship history, or our geographic history. So can we also consider the history of different aspects of our relationship with God. Fr. John expands on this saying,

I can, for instance, go through my life considering all the moments of consolation in which I have recognized God’s grace. I can do the same thing with respect to my times of desolation. I can also recall the times when I have not responded to the love of God, as well as those hope-filled moments in my life when I remember how light came out of darkness.

The story of God’s ways with us can also be traced through our sin history, through the history of opportunities we’ve been given, of ways that God has protected us, or used the relationships of our lives to lead us.

Consider exploring such a prayer on your own, or have someone share the observations of their graced history with your group. For those who might benefit from a more guided prayer format, Fr. Savio Rodrigues SJ offers these instructions for considering the various aspects of our graced history.

A Meditation on Your Graced History

• I seek the grace to be present to my life story as it is lovingly revealed to me by God, and I pray that I may respond generously to God’s love.
• I consider my life story in terms of grace-filled moments, looking perhaps at: relatives, friends, incidents of childhood, school, church, health, positions I have held, helps given or received.
• I look for times when I have specifically experienced the presence of God.
• I contemplate these times, re-living the event by seeing the persons, hearing the words, observing the actions and remembering my responses.
• I regard the events of my history as I would sacred Scripture, as a Word spoken by God into my life. How has God blessed me through this Word? How has God humbled me? How has God encouraged me?
• I discuss these events with God and seek a deeper appreciation of their meaning.
• Using any of these moments from my history, I take time in prayer to deeply abide with them, knowing that God has used such moments to form part of the foundation of my being, and of my growing relationship to Him.