A prayer for who we need to be

Saint Francis of Assisi wrote this prayer I want to share with you....

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

Most people stop there as the pray is powerful and reminds us we can be shining stars. But Christianity is not easy nor is it a road that is large and smooth and so he continues...

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

I pray these words may help and remind you of the disciplined life we have with so many blessings given to us. So we may be the light in the darkness and the shining stars. Amen.

The doll of salt -reflection #6 -

I was reading my devotions today and there is a section that has words of reflection. When I read a section by Anthony Bloom in his book called 'Living Prayer' I needed to write about it.

"A doll of salt, after a long pilgrimage on dry land, came to the sea and discovered something she had never seen and could not possibly understand. She stood on the firm ground, a solid little doll of salt, and saw there was another ground that was mobile, insecure, noisy, strange and unknown. She asked the sea, 'But what are you?' and it said, 'I am the sea.' And the doll said, 'What is the sea?' to which the answer was, 'It is me.' Then the doll said, 'I can not understand, but I want to; how can I?' The sea answered, 'Touch me'. So the doll shyly put forward a foot and touched the water and she got a strange impression that it was something that began to be knowable. She withdrew her leg, looked and saw that her toes had gone, and she was afraid and said, 'Oh, but where is my toe, what have you done to me?' And the sea said, 'You have given something in order to understand.' Gradually the water took away small bits of the doll's salt and the doll went farther and farther into the sea and at every moment she had a sense of understanding more and more, and yet of not being able to say what the sea was. As she went deeper, she melted more and more, repeating: 'But what is the sea?' At last a wave dissolved the rest of her and the doll said: 'It is I!' She had discovered what the sea was, but not yet what the water is."

"...The doll knew what the sea was when she had become, minute as she was, the vastness of the sea. So also when we enter into the knowledge of God, we do not contain God, but are contained in Him, and we become ourselves in this encounter with God, secure in His vastness..."

The gradual learning of God is unending. As we start this journey we will continue to our dying day to understanding God and knowing all there is to know of God and will continue even after death into eternity.  The mystery of knowing God is the vastness of the sea to stand before Him as we know Him to be but yet still unknown before us. Each glimpse into knowing God changes our perspective therefore each time we encounter Him we learn more but are still lost in knowing all.

Like the doll of salt we must be willing to lose oneself to know who we are in the relationship with God. The craving for understanding of God allows us to give of ourselves and learn a little of Him. In my own thoughts of this story I thought of an hour-glass that has no set amount of sand nor any containment of where it is falling into for the more we learn of God we also learn there is a vastness of understanding Him.

In the same way as the doll of salt sought to understand the sea I would walk closer to God giving of myself to understand Him and His holiness. This idea is present today in the term entire sanctification. Where we give of ourselves to serve and honor God with everything we are to draw closer to Him and even unto death the journey continues in learning of the vastness of God and growing closer to Him.

I hope each of us can be as simple as the doll of salt seeking to understand the sea. God Bless.