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Author: jeff
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What This Tree Taught Me
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Is It True That God Serves Me?
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God As Father
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Your Venomous Words Betray You
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Do You Have Any Boulders in Your Path?
TRANSCRIPT:
I was thinking this week that here we are in Lent, and everybody’s focused on sacrifice and breaking those attachments that we have to things of the world. And it occurred to me in kind of a vision of how we stand between God, what those sacrifices are really trying to do. And we’ve got this plain in front of us littered with rocks; some, small pebbles, some, enormous boulders that cast shadows on us that we could be completely obscured from the light by. And those boulders represent our serious attachments to things of this world that prevent us from fully experiencing the light or the grace of God.
And so when we’re sacrificing, when we’re giving something up, what we’re doing is trying to uproot that rock, that boulder, not only so that it’s not a stumbling block for us in terms of our salvation, but so that by removing that rock- that boulder- we can experience more fully the grace of God, we can immerse ourselves in grace. And that basic vision- I know it’s terribly simplistic, even childish, but it’s really helped me to kind of ask myself to look at the field of my life that exists in front of me like a long plain between me and a sunrise or a sunset, and ask myself: “What boulders exist there that are casting shadows on me, that are stopping me from receiving all the grace that God wants to give me?”
I hope this is helpful for you. I hope it brings some perspective, and if nothing else, maybe you can share it with your children.
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The Insult
TRANSCRIPT:
I was reading, in My Daily Bread, here, a passage, and it just really struck me. Let me see if I can tell you where this is. This is Book 3, Part 1, Chapter 4, on removing obstacles. And in paragraph 3, Our Lord says “You insult me if you make me compete with any created being for your attention and love.” When I read that, I was just hit because I have frequently felt insulted in my life when I had to compete with my children for my wife’s attention or if I had to compete with a TV or a video game to get the attention of my children or if I went to a meeting and the person I was meeting with had their head down, stuck in their phone, when we should have been talking. And I know how it has made me feel.
But to think that I’m no better than those people (in fact, I may even be a worse sinner than the people that I’m insulted by) and then to put that into the perspective of thinking about Our Lord- who was all perfect and all loving and did everything for us and suffered for us when He didn’t have to- that about brought me to my knees. It was a visceral, physical kind of reaction about the degree of insult that I give Our Lord when I give my attention to things of the world, other created things that I’m not engaged in an act of charity, as He would, but I’m doing it for myself or for my own enjoyment, or I’m procrastinating when I should be saying my prayers or doing something else. It’s really something to think about: how we insult Our Lord with our daily choices and actions. I hope this gives you some opportunity for prayer and meditation.
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What To Do and When To Do It
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Don’t Say THIS Prayer
TRANSCRIPT:
So, this is the worst prayer you can ever pray: the Litany of Humility. So, I prayed this prayer because I’m trying to work on pride, which is the root of all sins, and the other day, I had a significant Zoom meeting scheduled with a business prospect. I always take my time to make sure I’m in place, I’m prepared, I’ve done my research, my lighting is decent, sometimes I even try and brush my hair, that sort of thing. And moments before the Zoom call began, there was a fire right here on my desk. What had happened was the little space heater that I have here in my basement office that I use when it’s particularly cold outside caught fire. And so as my Zoom call began, you know, when they let you into that waiting room on a Zoom call? Right as that happened, there was smoke wafting up in front of the camera, and I could see the fire right in front of me.
And of course, I had no option but to try and deal with it right there on camera. That was how I began that call. And as embarrassing as that was, as difficult as that was, that was only just the beginning. Because as I kind of tried to explain to my prospective client what was happening, I heard what sounded like a waterfall in my office. And the truth is that there was, in fact, a waterfall in my office. There was a plumbing catastrophe with my aquaponics system. I have a great big fish tank, and the water from the fish tank is pumped into a container where we grow spinach and lettuce and thyme and basil and those kinds of things, and then the water recycles between the plants and the fish. That all sounds really good, and for the last three years it’s worked fantastically. Until that day.
Somehow, the drainage pipe had clogged up, and the water, instead of flowing back to the fish, was just- it was a waterfall right onto the floor of the basement. That was how I started out the most significant meeting of the week. And so I took that as a message from Our Lord that I need to maybe not take myself so seriously, trust in Him some more, and embrace this whole idea of humiliation, because that was pretty embarrassing.