Monday, June 4, 2018

Romans 7:22-25

I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Truly one      

The divided heart is the source of great pain. The ego demands recognition, achievement, seeking always to be respected and taken seriously. Beneath this, our basic physical desires drives us toward the pleasure and satisfaction of fundamental hungers as quickly as possible.

There is another desire as deep or deeper than these within us that seeks higher purpose. We seek to live at one, at peace, with a higher self, what some spiritual writers call ‘true self,’ identified by these and others as the image of God, or even as the “God-seed, within us.

Human hearts are at war with themselves, battlegrounds of opposing desires, until they surrender to the presence of Love, the true self, within. But it can happen in in surrender to Love. Until then, there can be no peace. But the peace of oneness comes.

It happens in moments when we know, just simply know, a great love within us for ourselves and for all creation. It happens when we experience our lives as a great gift, feeling the wonder of being alive, in existence and surrounded by a universe of color and immensity.

It happens when—for even the briefest of moments—the heart simply trusts that the Love it feels within and releases the ego’s insistent demands.  It happens when our hearts feel truly one, sharing union with the Love from which we can never be separated.

It is then that the hearts rests quietly with the heart of Christ within us, our small heart resting at peace inside the embrace of his great heart that embraces all things.

It is then that the internal war ceases, and the heart smiles, knowing … it has finally found home.

Pr. David L. Miller