bookmarks: March 2009

I recently went through a trial and failed miserably. Mostly it had to do with my lack of humility and disability to prefer others.. I thought it was about something completely different. I've been sulking for about a week over the offense, and holding my head high for not taking the low road (well mostly) but at the same time feeling a complete block from God's presence. I realized pretty early on that it had something to do with lack of humility, but started to panic and become miserable and discouraged because God wasn't readily giving me the answer. I realize now that I wasn't able to receive the lesson until now. It kind of hit at all angles but it wasn't put more perfectly and completely until I came across this in my reading this morning (in "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas a Kempis) and afterwards followed a prompt to read "the beattitudes"

This is a really great passage to meditate on, and then continue meditation in the beattitudes:

Until God ordains otherwise, a man ought to bear patiently whatever he cannot correct in himself and in others. Consider it better thus--perhaps to try you patience and to test you, for without such patience an trial your merits are of little account. Nevertheless, under such difficulties you should pray that God will consent to help you bear them calmly.
if, after being admonished once or twice, a person does not amend, do not argue with him but commit the whole matter to God that His will and honor may be furthered in all His servants, for God knows well how to turn evil to good. Try to bear patiently with the defects and infirmities of others, whatever they may be, because you also have many a fault which others must endure.
If you cannot make yourself what you would wish to be, how can you bend others to your will? We want them to be perfect, yet we do not correct our own faults [plank in the eye anyone?]. We wish them to be severely corrected, yet we will not correct ourselves. Their great lierty displeases us, yet we would not be denied what we ask. We would have them bound by laws, yet we will allow ourselves to be restrained in nothingl Hence, it is clear how seldom we think of others as we do of ourselves.
If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for God's sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with one another's burdens, for there is no man without fault, no man without burden, no man sufficient to himself nor wise enough. Hence we must support on another, console one another, mutually help, counsel and advise, for the measure of eery man's virtue is best revealed in time of adversity--adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.

-Thomas a Kempis (Translated by Aloysius Croft and Harold Bolton)