Grrr!

Today’s Scripture Readings:
OT: Isaiah 52-53
NT: Romans 6
W&W: Psalm 79

Today’s Reflection:

I had lunch with a new friend (and her family) on Father’s Day: Jess, a young lady who is going on the mission trip to Guatemala that our church is sponsoring. Anyway, as we were talking, she shared with me a ministry she is involved in in Lexington, through the church where she worships at college. It is a very “front-line” ministry. I was so proud of her as she told me about it. And I just told her to growl, “Grrr!” because I saw her as a tough warrior on the battlefield in the cause of Christ.

In my message yesterday, I shared the following from Nikos Kazantzakis in the Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, as quoted in A Guide to Prayer, pp 115-116:
I put my body through its paces like a war horse; I keep it clean, sturdy, prepared. I harden it and I pity it. I have no other steed.
I keep my brain wide awake, lucid, unmerciful. I unleash it to battle relentlessly so that, all light, it may devour the darkness of the flesh. I have no other workshop where I may transform darkness into light.
I keep my heart flaming, courageous, restless. I feel in my heart all commotions and all contradictions, the joys and sorrows of life. But I struggle to subdue them to a rhythm superior to that of the mind, harsher than that of my heart – to the ascending rhythm of the Universe.
The Cry within me is a call to arms. It shouts: “I, the Cry, am the Lord your god! I am not an asylum. I am not hope and a home. I am not the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost. I am your General!
You are not my slave, nor a plaything in my hands. You are not my friend, you are not my child. You are my comrade-in-arms!
Hold courageously the passes which I entrusted to you; do not betray them. You are in duty – bound, and you may act heroically by remaining at your own battle station.
Love danger. What is most difficult? That is what I want! Which road should you take? The most craggy ascent! It is the one I also take: follow me!
Learn to obey. Only he who obeys a rhythm superior to his own is free.
Learn to command. Only he who can give commands may represent me here on earth.
Love responsibility. Say: ‘It is my duty, and mine alone to save the earth. If it is not saved; then I alone am to blame…

May God give us hearts like that, the kind of heart that will growl! Grrr!

This Week’s Scripture to Memorize:
Put 1 John 1.5-10 together: 5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.