Taking Another Break During the Work Day

The last three posts offered special spiritual passages. If you read them slowly and thought about and/or meditated on them - as suggested - you may have come away with one or more little rays of light, even a kind of happy sunshine to brighten your work day.

I didn't pick these three arbitrarily. They were passages I've read many time in the past, and therefore already had penetrated my thick skull, hard heart, and empty soul enough to leave some residue. But even with that, re-reading them proved an even stronger tonic than they had been in the past. 

So right off the bat, experience proved the theory that re-reading helps penetrate deeper into the words. 

What about reading slowly? That's something I've learned over time with some degree of success. But being reminded of this has reinforced it's value.

Like anyone with a busy job - amplified by being the owner of a small business - slowing down takes heroic effort. Most days, just being able to concentrate on my spiritual reading presents a challenge. That's why I almost always approach spiritual reading early in the day, typically in the first hour of the morning. It's the only time of day when there's any hope of concentrating on the words with fewer distractions. But because time is limited, it's not uncommon that I slip into rushing to "finish." 

That's wrong, of course. There's no "finish." The ideal approach is - as we've suggested - read slowly and allow the words to penetrate the mind, the heart, and the soul. If you do this, you may very well feel that penetration in some way. And when you do, that's when you pause. You maybe re-read. You definitely think about/meditate on those words. "Finishing" doesn't factor into this.

Here are some sections of those last three spiritual passages that penetrated. This is from our first passage: 

...by the force of God’s disposing grace, the soul reaches the stage where she is no longer not only not surprised by her repeated falls, but rather surprised that she, in her weakness, does not fall more often. 

It's been a while, but I can vaguely remember when the change occurred. I had read about the sad but true fact that we repeatedly fail in our efforts to be good and holy. It's quite unpleasant (at least it was for me) to face up to that fact. God's grace succeeded despite my having to be dragged to the truth kicking and screaming. But once there, as is always the case, the truth set me free to see things are they really are.

...in the depths of its nothingness, the soul finds the repose of confidence in God. The real and only foundation of this confidence is God alone – God, Who is infinitely good, all-powerful and faithful to His promises. 

The full recognition of our nothingness is by no means pleasant or reassuring when it first sinks in. Nothing? Me? But once it penetrates deep into your soul, the reward comes: repose in the confidence in God. Turning from confidence in self to confidence in God brings us closer to Him. Hence the reward. 

The more miserable we are, the more promptly and fully should our cry of distress call forth the help of God… Let these consoling truths sink into your mind, and lift up your heart. If God be with you, who can be against you?

As you might imagine, those first inklings of our nothingness that beget a meaningful confidence in God don't happen overnight. And when they commence, it takes some time for them to gather strength (at least it did for me). As they grow stronger, you realize that your trust and confidence will not - likely not ever - eliminate the misery that comes from our continued sins as well as our failures both in the spiritual life, as well as our personal life. (And this includes our failures in our work life as well.) 

As all this unfolds, we need to promptly and urgently send out our distress signal - "our cry of distress" - to our loving Father. Even if we revert back to depending on self, with time, and persistent effort, Our Father will never quit calling us to his confidence, never stop urging us to simply trust in Him.

Do this and the ultimate consolation may dawn: "If God be with you, who can be against you?"

Can anything be sweeter than this?