We are all faced over and over with the decision of whether or not we will love. We all choose our relationship with pain. We all decide whether we embrace suffering or reject it. In what we accept or deny, we determine whether or not we love.
We can cry out of hopeless desperation, feeling frantic, and convinced that all is lost. Or we can profoundly weep out of great love for others.
We can let tears fall from our eyes without realizing their value. Or we can weep offering our tears as prayers to God.
All we send out from our being echoes out into the universe. As a tear falls from your eye, if you offer it as a humble prayer to God, when it drops into the liquid lake of spiritual solidarity we share, you can implicitly offer that tear to help others. Your tearful prayers are effective when they are offered as the basis of humble and earnest prayer. When such humble, ardent tears of yours hit the liquid lake of spiritual community we share, these tears send out ripples of love across that surface. Thus through such tears you can seek to strengthen your spiritual brothers and sisters.
I am not merely speaking in theoretical terms here. Ever since earlier this week, when a dear homeless friend who I'll once again here call "Sally" shared with me how she views tears as liquid prayers, her statement of spiritual insight has been echoing in my soul. Like a drop of water that falls into a pond and causes ripples outward, so her tender spiritual musing, coming into contact with my ears, has been echoing in my soul.
Despite the struggle, Sally has chosen not to let her agonizing experiences dominate how she responds to life. As I have mentioned in prior blog posts, Sally has endured domestic violence. Despite having been hit hard many times by multiple men, Sally refuses to be enslaved by the pain she has felt. Instead she offers up her tears to God. Interwoven with her sensitivity and fragility, she also displays a courageous and admirable tenacity, and so she sends out a strong message of faith, hope and love, that pain can be the basis of a beautiful transformation of one's spirit.
Knowing, then, that we can consent to our suffering being transformed into the joy that emerges out of service of others, we can come to experience a radical alteration of how we feel pain, see pain, and respond to pain. Aware that God works all for the good of those who love Him,* we come to realize that even anguish can lead to joy, if we seize upon such opportunities to petition God. Thus in all we experience we can be joyous,** if all we do is for the praise, glory and honor of God.
Conscious that all we experience presents us chances to glorify God by assenting to call upon Him so He may show us His great love always, we come to give thanks always for all things.*** As we come to express such gratitude at all times, God comes to give us a deep, abiding and enduring peace, as, feeling His love, Jesus comes to abide in us, and we in Him.****
Let us embrace every opportunity we have, then, including in the midst of our tears, to pray constantly,***** give thanks for all things always, and thus love God and love our neighbor. Thus we come to live a life of love. Amen.
* Romans 8:28
** 1 Thessalonians 5:16
*** 1 Thessalonians 5:18
**** John 15:4-7,9-10
***** 1 Thessalonians 5:17
We can cry out of hopeless desperation, feeling frantic, and convinced that all is lost. Or we can profoundly weep out of great love for others.
We can let tears fall from our eyes without realizing their value. Or we can weep offering our tears as prayers to God.
All we send out from our being echoes out into the universe. As a tear falls from your eye, if you offer it as a humble prayer to God, when it drops into the liquid lake of spiritual solidarity we share, you can implicitly offer that tear to help others. Your tearful prayers are effective when they are offered as the basis of humble and earnest prayer. When such humble, ardent tears of yours hit the liquid lake of spiritual community we share, these tears send out ripples of love across that surface. Thus through such tears you can seek to strengthen your spiritual brothers and sisters.
I am not merely speaking in theoretical terms here. Ever since earlier this week, when a dear homeless friend who I'll once again here call "Sally" shared with me how she views tears as liquid prayers, her statement of spiritual insight has been echoing in my soul. Like a drop of water that falls into a pond and causes ripples outward, so her tender spiritual musing, coming into contact with my ears, has been echoing in my soul.
Despite the struggle, Sally has chosen not to let her agonizing experiences dominate how she responds to life. As I have mentioned in prior blog posts, Sally has endured domestic violence. Despite having been hit hard many times by multiple men, Sally refuses to be enslaved by the pain she has felt. Instead she offers up her tears to God. Interwoven with her sensitivity and fragility, she also displays a courageous and admirable tenacity, and so she sends out a strong message of faith, hope and love, that pain can be the basis of a beautiful transformation of one's spirit.
Knowing, then, that we can consent to our suffering being transformed into the joy that emerges out of service of others, we can come to experience a radical alteration of how we feel pain, see pain, and respond to pain. Aware that God works all for the good of those who love Him,* we come to realize that even anguish can lead to joy, if we seize upon such opportunities to petition God. Thus in all we experience we can be joyous,** if all we do is for the praise, glory and honor of God.
Conscious that all we experience presents us chances to glorify God by assenting to call upon Him so He may show us His great love always, we come to give thanks always for all things.*** As we come to express such gratitude at all times, God comes to give us a deep, abiding and enduring peace, as, feeling His love, Jesus comes to abide in us, and we in Him.****
Let us embrace every opportunity we have, then, including in the midst of our tears, to pray constantly,***** give thanks for all things always, and thus love God and love our neighbor. Thus we come to live a life of love. Amen.
* Romans 8:28
** 1 Thessalonians 5:16
*** 1 Thessalonians 5:18
**** John 15:4-7,9-10
***** 1 Thessalonians 5:17
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