Over 2000 years ago a little-known Jewish profit travelled from small town to small town healing those that the Pharisees and other church leaders considered unworthy or unclean. These unfortunates were not allowed to pray in the synagogues or bathe in the public baths. They ate from the trash bins and slept in dark spots away from the places where those in charge might find them and punish them for being poor.
Meanwhile, those with money ate the best food, drank their precious wine, bathed in the public baths, attended synagogues daily and prayed, blessing themselves for doing good. They gave very small handouts to those closest to the doors of the synagogues. And when they returned home, they punished their servants for small misdeeds while they were away.
Overall, our society is the same today as it was 2000 years ago; the only difference is we celebrate that wandering Jew in our houses of worship and call Him Christ our Savior, yet we undo everything He stood for and everything He practiced in His time while He walked among us. We are the outcasts, and we are the sinners; we have yet learned to heal. What hypocrites we remain!
I just finished “The Language of God” by Francis S. Collins in which he relates a story about his time in Africa when he saves a dying young farmer’s life, and when talking the farmer, who is holding his Bible in his arms, tells Collins why he came to Africa. He merely says, “You came here for me.”
This absolutely stunned me into physical and emotional silence!
I have had three near death experiences in my lifetime; I was saved on an operating table by three different doctors, using their God-given talents to bring me back to life. All three times, God’s angels, gently asked me not to take that last step through the portal; it was always my choice! All three times the doctors had come here for me!
I call all of the people in the doctor’s offices, from the attendants checking me in, to the nurses, the doctors, and even the custodians keeping the places clean, angels of God, because they show up every day for us.
Aren’t we blessed when we can tell someone that you came here for me!
Our lifetime can be a battle between our past and our future. Our path doesn’t exist in our memories from our childhoods, at least not too clearly, much of which we don’t remember. We really don’t remember all that much-loved; we’re supposed to, I suppose. The love that is given to us by our mother, the nurturing, the kindness and goodness that was showered on us from aunts and uncles. From the suckling of the breast to the cuddling in the crib, to the laughter around the dinner table.
But we do remember the arguing between mother and father. The venom. The hatred that we grew up with. The punishments with the old wooden spoon. The breaking of the toys out of anger. First from the parents and the from our own breaking because of frustration.
What we learned through life. That there is goodness. And through the hardest times of our days. Goodness can overrule any of those bad memories because we know, deep down, that there was love in our house. How else could we have developed friendships through high school if we had not had goodness as an example in our in our home? And that goodness gave us the will and the power to endure even the hardest times of our life. And then we learned to bring out what was inside of us. And that’s the heart and soul that God gave us. And the understanding that God was with us. Every day in our life. And we learned to open our hearts. And see the beauty of God. See the brightness of God’s life. The brightness of God’s light. In our hearts and in our life. That gave us the power. To overcome. The problems. The fears, the hardships. And through determination we then discovered wisdom.
Wisdom that allowed us to know that every creature on earth and every grain of sand that we walk upon is created by God. That we enjoy and helps us get through these most difficult times. And through reason and adaptability, we learn to love and love each other. Love the beasts of the world of which we are one of. And love all of God’s creation. As the greatest reflection of God’s boundless light and love, the human heart. Within the human heart, containing the soul that is placed within us by God. The soul is not our property, it’s God’s. And that is the source of our love. And our peace. That we carry within us. That brings forth the love of the home that we grew up in. That deep within us, we remember. Has a place of love. Which is why. You are loved. We are loved.
Have we ever heard the express, “ it is never a bad time to do the right thing?”
It’s a good day to begin to practice this simple maxim. And, it doesn’t take any hard work, money, or extra time to do it. Many times, it can just be a simple smile, or a thank you, or even holding a door open for the person behind you, struggling with a walker.
And, you know, God thanks us in many ways: getting that last cinnamon cruller at the bakery in the morning, getting on the subway or elevator just before the doors close, or getting that long distance client call you have missed for the last week.
I love it when my five-year-old grandson says, “I love you, Grumpy” that’s my name in the family! Gee, I wonder why???
God rewards us in m any simple ways when we perform simple acts of kindness.
We are all confronted by evil; to me, most of this evil comes in the form of trite expectations expected by society. We are pressured by family, friends, political leaders, and our religious leaders to conform to a society that in reality does not exist in God’s world. Each new generation is preparing for a new age that never arrives, except only in its thinking.
There is only one way to live. We must open our hearts, push our education into the back of our minds and think in the present, or as spiritual philosophers say, in the now. When we do this, we realize that our life is meaningless unless we see others as children of God, accepting that they also are created by goodness and reflect the same. This is our one moral duty. This is loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Matthew reports the words of Jesus after His sermon on the mountain that we must live a life that gives honor to God by our good works. Ours is not the glory; glory is only in and with God. We share this glory because of God’s love and faithfulness to us. Both of which we must share with others to realize and live in God’s glorious presence. I think of the purification of the Levites by YHWH. This symbolic action brings the gift of God within us. In effect, the Israelites were sacrificing the worldly pleasures of one sect of their group to bring God’s presence within the entire population. This is what our priests and clergy do preparing for their life of ministry. However, we must do the same in our personal lives to bring God’s Love and Grace to all people regardless of their race, creed, or religion.
We must shed all unhealthy desires for worldly riches and accept that God is the only element in our lives that gives us life, invites us to shed all overbearing impulses that invade our consciousness and, helps us understand the reality of death. I remind myself that for God nothing is impossible. Being 82 years on this planet, I sometimes complain about physical problems and insecurities. It is times such as these that I think of what God did for Zacharias and Elizabeth in their advanced ages. Nothing is impossible in God’s world. This assures me that evil, the banality of evil, is ever present in our minds dictating untruths. Therefore, I meditate; therefore, I listen to God when praying. Therefore, I put my life in God’s hands every night and every day, for this is my true living; this is the life I share with my wife of 57 years, the gift God joined in my life.
Yes, there is evil in the world in which we live; but it is nothing when we accept God in our hearts.
Or should this really be the turmoil of life and death; or, better yet, the stink of life and death~~~
A – We rise this morning to a day filled with promises of love and glory. The Sun is shining; the birds are singing their glorious songs; and the children are happily skipping their way to school down the street. We step out our front door, look at the beautiful day, and decide that it is the perfect day to walk to work, for the Lord is sending Her love and grace to fulfill our baskets of plenty today.
We stop at the local coffee shop, get our favorite cup of coffee and when we turn around, bump into a lady, being very upset, we apologize and go on the way to the office. When we get to the office, we notice our suit jacket, shirt, and tie are very stained by spilled coffee. . . the rest of our day goes downhill very quickly.
B – We rise this morning to a day filled with promises of love and glory. There is no Sun; a storm is blowing the leaves on the trees upside down. No birds are singing their glorious songs; and there are no children happily walking to school; their mothers are all backing their SUV’s out of the driveways to drive the children the three blocks down the street. We hop in our own cars, drive the few blocks to work, park, run into the coffee shop, grab a cup of coffee, turn quickly, exchange pleasantries with the same woman we bumped into yesterday behind to us, rush to our office, and go to our desk. . . and have the best day of the year.
Why does God play such foolish games on us?
Ah, yes, the fickleness and turmoil of modern-day life!
Why do we rely so much on joy? Most of our daily life is joy free! Let’s face it, we get up, eat a quick breakfast, grab a cup of coffee and off we go for a 10 – 12 – 14-hour day depending on commuting time to work. And that’s if we don’t have to fly across the country for a corporate or client meeting. We never know what each day will bring in the way of joylessness.
So, how do we have a pain-free day? The answer is, we don’t. it is virtually impossible to go through the day in our world the way that we have created it, without suffering in some way, little or big, the suffering is always there.
And, we need to find joy to sustain us through these days to boost our spiritual journeys through our lives just to keep our feet firmly on the ground. We need joy for this spiritual ground-ness.
As Paul writes in Ecclesiastes “a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” Psychologists will tell us that the pain that our wok gives us in our daily struggles is also the root for the joys in our lives. We must build on these roots.
The pain that brings us to struggle is also the root of joy. We have to build on these roots of joy to sustain our lives. And the simplest way is to follow our instincts. Man is a social animal. Go to lunch with a business associate. Do not talk about business. Talk about each other; share each other’s stories; be a visitor in another person’s life. Become part of the greater family of man.
Begin to feel a part of something greater than yourself and know that whatever tomorrow will bring is okay, because God knows.
Jesus is not accepted as the Son of God by all religions. However, Jesus is accepted as one of the long lines of revered prophets sent by God to advise and counsel His people here on earth by many of the great religions on earth. This influence impossibly guided Jesus and the disorder will attest to his place among the prophets. As with many previous prophets, the authorities killed him. He was condemned by the Hebrews of His day and was nailed to a tree by the Romans because he threatened the establishments of both orders. As did so many of the other prophets that came along, by threatening the power of the establishment, particularly the very word of the priests, at best you were cast our, at worst you were sacrificed. Even today, those priests in the Roman Church, who speak outside of the official word are threatened by the power of the church or excommunicated. And there are radicals out there that may threaten to kill those priests, just as they killed Jesus.
My ultra conservative Christian brothers and sisters may want to stop reading now.
Jesus was not a conservative Christian; Jesus was not a Liberal rabble-rouser. Jesus was sent to speak against the established order and restore God’s word of Love.
I have been a Christian all my life and believed in what the Bible taught and what the church leaders preached. In the late 1980s I had some really tough experiences of loss, failures, and frustrations. I delved deeper into my meditations; I became a prayer minister; I began studying the daily life of Jesus; it was drilled into my life that Jesus was a Christian, but He wasn’t. He was always a Jew, so I began re-reading everything I had learned with the understanding that Jesus was Jewish not Christian.
There were several other Gospels written about Jesus that were buried by the religious leaders in Rome because they did not like them, or they did not like the authors. For example, read the Gospel of Mary; think how this small gospel, supposedly written by a woman, would have changed our century, if allowed in our Bible back in the 4th century.
Light and prayer surrounded my thinking and my aura; my entire relationship with Jesus change; and explosion of birdsong and bees singing in harmony awakened my senses eenlightening me that Jesus did not come to earth to begin a new religion; He came to earth to open our eyes to the Love of God and the brotherhood of all mankind; not the separation of people according to color or origin or gender.
We are of one family; the family of God; and, Jesus is our teacher, our guide through the hard times, reminding us that our Father is with us always in rough times and in good times. I am not better than you. I love you. This is the message; this is why God sent Jesus to lead us.
Meditating to Heal 
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