Sunday, Third Week of Lent

Those Between Wants Will Be Restless

I am The Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is the water under the earth.  EXODUS 20:2-4

There it is.  No other Gods.  And I hear my mentor, Jerry May, saying:  "Whatever has your full attention in any given moment is, for that moment, your God."

This came from a man with an amazing intellect, who saught diligently for knowledge about spiritual and psychological development that would explain the parallels and the disparaties between the two disciplines:  spirituality and psychology.

Then this man became terminally ill.  And his deepest desire was to discover the ways to enter God's presence.  He looked at prayer, meditation, contemplation, body movement, and he searched for the perfect "drone" (an instrument that makes a thrumming sound used in meditation).

Finally in his last book he concluded that after all the searching, he realized that "It simply is!"

In other words, after all of his searching and his years of focusing intently upon thoughts and disciplines and practices and (the list goes on) he finally arrived at the point where his body and mind and even his heart offered no answer.

He died very peacefully.  Perhaps he died more peacefully than he lived most of his life.  After all, the only thing he wanted in the end was to be with God.

That is one desire that is never left unsatisfied.

Prayer:  Gracious God, forgive me when I don't give you my full attention.