14:31-16:23
According to The Journal, the reflection for this chapter is tomorrow but I've been thinking about it today. I'm at the end of the chapter except for the Lord's Prayer and the spiritual interpretation.
I looked through the pages in the blog and the pages in S&H. It feels like my billionth read of the chapter. The idea of prayer as work keeps coming back to me. By work, I mean specifically the demonstration of: patience, meekness, love, and good deeds.
It's funny how every time I 'work' on CS, concentrate on it and take time for it, some part of my life turns to heck. And that part seems to take over my thought and the problem grows until I don't want to read S&H, I just want the human problem fixed in a human will kind of way. Skip prayer. Just get it done.
The idea in today's passage that caught my eye was the mention of the first lie. The text doesn't say it there but I always think of the first lie as the idea that I am separate from God. It's a seductive lie and can be anywhere and anything. It can even be a thought that I'm not getting anything out of this or that it's too much work to change. On an objective level, I know the lie. I know how to argue against the lie. Yet, still, the noise in my head...
Tomorrow, the Lord's Prayer.
I appreciate your honesty as I feel that sometimes also, that my life should be getting better when I put in the work. Well, it is over the long run but in the moment it does not feel like it.
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