Awestruck

Doubt is mostly viewed as a negative trait or as even as the opposite of faith. We think this way largely because we imagine doubt and faith in still life, or rigidly defined - devoid of motion. Such attempts at crystallization lose sight of the inner dynamics and play when we struggle with doubt. When we doubt, a number of forces arise within us: curiosity, fear, urgency, to name only a few. 

These forces compel us to know - to experience - and to do so we act. We move. We seek answers. We position ourselves to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears.

Doubt drives the struggle - without it we would never see potentiality give birth to actuality. This is precisely why God does not present himself as an irrefutable fact. He wants us to struggle. He wants us to be curious and to move toward Him. He wants us to pursue him until, like the moth whose new wings are strengthened by its endeavor to escape the cocoon, we emerge transformed into a new creation that exchanges the rigidity of an earthbound life for the boundless skies.

Today we will rediscover the nature and purpose of doubt - and how to allow it to serve as a positive force for transformation.

Source Scripture

Matthew 11:1-6; Luke 7:18-23

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We have unwittingly exchanged the active experience of being alive in the present for living in a dank library filled with atomized facts that we read not with just our eyes, but with our whole physical bodies. We willingly plug ourselves into a matrix of technology and information that, given the right combination, can summon fleeting fulfillment of our selfish desires: popularity, prosperity, pleasure, and power.

These four pillars serve as the supports that bear the table of lifeless and soul-less reductionism where we spend our lives attempting to put together the one-million piece puzzle from the box of pieces that, even if accomplished, would result only in a flattened and ghoulishly carved representation of the real world that awaits us in plain sight - if only we would just turn around, leave the puzzle behind, and embark on a journey of adventure, purpose, and meaning.

We live in blueprints rather than homes. We exchange the territory for the map and the symphony for the sheet music, both of which can be neatly tucked into our day planners. We have abandoned the rapture of a starry night for a lifeless book where the front cover has faded under the white-washed sky of light pollution, the back cover boasts of the data contained within, and the pages between them offer not stories, but columns and charts, distances and densities, enormity and expansion. 

We have stripped sacred symbols of their resonance and reduced them to tokens and trinkets to buy, sell, or appropriate for monetary gain. Two-handed scrolls enchant no longer, now lost to mindless single-handed scrolling. Pythagoras marveled at meaning in mathematics, envisioning the number one as the symbol for unity and ten for perfection. He found astonishing connections between music and ratio. But now hear the name Pythagoras and all we can muster is a-squared plus b-squared = c-squared as a formula to conquer algebra tests and solve occasional problems. Mathematics are now mere means to ends.

We have wandered from wonder, only to wonder why we wander.

Today, we delve deeply into the hope that this wretched wasteland in which we wander is not our home - the hope that we may yet wake up and rise up and return to reverence, recapturing rapture and seizing the sublime.

Welcome back to wonder.

Source Scripture

Luke 7:11-17

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Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves; for if our virtues did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike as if we had them not. William Shakespeare

Such words capture the essence of a latent power within us, awaiting the spark of purpose to ignite.

From our first breath, we are cradled in potential, but our world orbits around primal needs, each cry a beacon of dependence. Yet, as the veil of infancy lifts, the tender choreography of growth and guidance train us to wield the sword of power. And once trained, we are free to choose how to fulfill our potential. 

The easiest path, perhaps, is to mold power to the whims of desire, where the ego eschonces itself as the unyielding center, its gravitational force gripping all it covets.

As we grow older, the spectrum of power broadens—intellectual, political, social, occupational, extending its tendrils into the vast garden of human endeavor. And with every strand of authority entwined around it, there emerges a dichotomy of choice—will we use our power be a vessel of selfish craving or a conduit of collective good?

The news often paints a grim tapestry of power misused—a teacher betraying trust, a politician trading integrity for gold, a city council weaving webs of defamation, a police badge morphing into a shroud of fear, a shepherd fleecing his flock. 

Yet, amidst this gloom, rays of hope pierce through— a policewoman’s badge shining as a shield of protection and service, a school principal crafting a haven of learning and respect, a city council sowing seeds of prosperity, a politician being the voice of the voiceless, a pastor trading earthly gold for the treasure of service.

In this grand theatre, the power of choice orchestrates every act. It's the silent custodian of all other powers, holding the potential to either plunge us into an abyss of self-indulgence or elevate us to beacons of hope amid the encroaching shadows. The path we tread in wielding this primal power echoes the essence of today’s passage—the reverence of recognizing a power beyond ourselves, an authority rooted in the heart of divine love.

Source Scripture

Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10

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To see is to discern with clarity what is…

C.S. Lewis addressed what he saw as the oncoming blindness to what is in his book The Abolition of Man.

Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful. In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.

Reason, both C.S. Lewis and Plato insist, follows a natural conformity to the existing harmony of the Universe - to what is. To see is to recognize this, much like a beginning piano player must strain to learn the existing workings of the piano and how dancing her fingers across the keys can create something beautiful.

To see and know what is, then, precedes reason. Reason flows into us once we take in the wonder - the splendor - of the true nature of being.

Today’s episode is a review of the previous six episodes, where Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount as a revelation of the true nature of being and then proceeds to immediately fulfill the deepest desires of a man gripped by suffering to be restored to his true nature.

And in all of these episodes, all the while as Jesus is opening our eyes to us what is, he is also peering directly into the depths of our souls to reveal our longings, our needs, and our blindness to the truth and whispers to us, “I see you - and I want to heal you.”

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:13-14
Matthew 7:15-20; Luke 6:43-45
Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46
Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49
Matthew 7:28-29
Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16

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Acceptance - we yearn for it in our inmost being. We long for others to accept us as we are, and yet we are terrified that who we are - which includes our shortcomings, our fears, our secret stories of horror, the terrible things we have thought and done - will repel others and deny us the very acceptance we seek.

And so we don costumes, adapting some role that isn't us, hoping to finally earn acceptance. But is it really acceptance if we gain it as someone other than our true self?

Maintaining the false self requires exerting so much effort that we then collapse when in solitude and wonder why we feel so empty, lonely, and starved for the very thing we created the false self in the first place - acceptance.

Your deepest desires for acceptance cannot and will not be met until your true self can safely and wholly emerge in full view of another that has an enthusiastic willingness to approach, to touch, to wipe away tears, to gently clean away all impurities to reveal the beauty that lies beneath - you. 

When your desire for acceptance, free of costume, meets and grasps the divine desire to accept you for who you really are - you have reached the most sacred space on all earth - the axis mundi - where heaven meets earth. Where the divine meets - and embraces - you.

Source Scripture

Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16

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Recommended Reading

The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus

Our modern way of thinking has created a false dichotomy between truth and experience. We have become obsessed with the reduction of truth into facts: atomic sentences and numbers and equations that we can use as a periodic table of elements.

But this obsession holds no real power. No matter how well you know that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen combine to form water, this fact will not help you when you are on your knees in the desert and dying of thirst.

Water is life, and your experience of consuming it is vital.

Spiritual truths exemplify this need for active participation even more deeply.  A sacred text is not sacred because it reveals truth in written form. It is sacred when and only when the truth in the text connects the spirits of both reader and writer and the experience of sacred communion takes place.

Facts stripped of truth and immersive experience are lifeless at best and oppressive at worst. But when spirit meets truth - yours and the divine - you lose your mind and find your soul.

So if you're stuck in your head and dying of thirst in a land of facts, it's time to strike out on a new adventure.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:28-29

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Our quest for peace - contentment, rest, fulfillment - is, paradoxically, most often filled with frustration, anger, exhaustion, and even rage. Make more money, acquire necessary things, secure fulfilling relationships, and fulfill sensual desires.

Over and over again, great obstacles present themselves. Storms arise. Obstacles roll over us. People thwart us. Disasters destroy all that we have worked for and take away those that we love.

And when we find ourselves naked and afraid - when all is lost except loss itself - where do we go? What do we do?

We could, like the great phoenix, resolve to rise from the ashes and rebuild our lives by starting over and repeating our quest.

Or, perhaps we could reconsider the quest itself and reexamine what it is we seek.

If what we seek is peace, which is an inward state of being - a mode of consciousness - then why do we assume at the outset that our quest must be the triumphal conquest of external circumstance?

If what we truly desire is an inward oasis, then our quest must be an inner odyssey.

The journey to fulfillment lies wholly within. And the deeper we go, the more this truth becomes clear to us, until in our spirit we arrive at the very ground of our being and discover there that the truth really does set you free.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49

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Without conscious and concerted effort, our focus will always be on ourselves. What we want. What we need. What we'll do to get what we want and need.

This focus reveals our purpose - which, if we are honest, is to bend the world and all that is in it in our favor. We desire to be seen and to be valued, and with this focus we devise actions that will garner attention, gain praise, and earn love. When we fail, as we inevitably will, we become increasingly discontent and grow more likely to reduce others to the role of competitor, ally, enemy, or tool.

Such self-centered living is destined to fail, despite our rational thoughts to the contrary and despite seeing those we idolize post their social proof. The human soul is not designed to be selfish - it is designed to serve. It is designed to be a cup that receives divine love from above and pours it out freely here below.

Soul-centered living brings freedom and opens the doorway into the kingdom of heaven. Self-centeredness, in its desperation to justify itself, has a way of pretending to be righteous with magic tricks that may fool the eye at first glance. But all that hocus focus cannot and will not ever serve us or others.

Today, we'll expose the magic tricks that attempt to make self-centeredness disappear, and we'll rediscover the true meaning of life.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46

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What gives? The sun gives light and warmth. A mother gives milk and hugs and nurture. Birdsong brings smiles. The forest offers solace. The moon and the stars above give a sense of awe and perspective below. Friends provide comfort. Children bring joy. Trees bear fruit. Sheep provide wool. 

What takes? Light pollution takes away the splendor of the night sky. Thieves seize what is not theirs. Accidents, war, and disease take loved ones. Litter takes away beauty. Thorns take blood. Wolves take life.

We are attracted to what gives. We are suspicious at best or terrified at worst of what takes.

Knowing this natural law of attraction and avoidance, some costume themselves as what gives, but behind the mask is a liar. A thief. A murderer.

Today, we learn how to identify these masked marauders - particularly those who claim to give goodness and truth and guidance when in fact they are only after what they can get out of us.

To take is human. To give, divine.  

Let's open our eyes to the divine to see what gives.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:15-20; Luke 6:43-45

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To attain what we desire most, we mistakenly believe that we must move forward, acquire more, learn much, guard relentlessly, achieve fame, win awards, and stockpile power.

And yet, our true desires are never met by our effort, ingenuity, or winsome charisma. Our true desires - the ones that emanate from the ground of our being and refuse to quiet their call until we fulfill them - are found through simple, quiet, effortless means.

Finding fulfillment in this life does not come by learning, but by unlearning. It does not come by grasping, but by releasing. Not by pursuing, but by surrendering to being pursued. Not by leading, but by following. And not by demanding, but by accepting.

The gateway to paradise - the kingdom of heaven - exists on this side of the grave. It stands open for all who would enter.

Finding that gate....is the focus of today's episode.

Source Scripture

Mathew 7:13-14

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Desire is a divine gift that stirs the soul, prompting us to pursue its fulfillment. Yet we often corrupt divine desire by conflation and control.

We conflate love with lust, which drives us to see the other as a utilitarian object to fulfill lustful desire rather than a divine being with which to seek meaningful presence. We conflate joy with happiness, and pursue fleeting pleasures. We conflate peace with the absence of annoyance and play never ending whack-a-mole with the slightest intrusion.

Conflation leads to control. Lust requires control, reducing sex to on-demand video, one-night stands, rape, pedophilia, and worse. Happiness demands that we control the trinkets kept within our reach so that we may summon them at will. Removing annoyances instead of seeking shalom forces us to use force to silence unwanted voices.

To pursue desire by conflation, control, or the commingled concoction of both inevitably leads to anxiety, frustration, and the worship of money as the wellspring of control.

We suffer anxiety over our limited control and abilities to obtain what we want. Frustration strikes when we fail, but ultimately even when we supposedly succeed as our conflated counterparts don’t culminate in contentment. And the love of money is inescapable. Money is control, mathematically summoned at will.

The path of conflation and control to fulfill desire will never bring satisfaction - it is a dead-end road that, despite our best efforts, cannot be turned into a luxurious culdesac of consummation.

The divine path of desire is paved with trust in the Divine God of the Universe who created our desires and designed us to seek Him for their fulfillment. Trust removes the need for control and eliminates the habit of conflation, leaving us in a state of blissful shalom.

This underlying theme pervades our last six episodes, though without in-depth contemplation we will engage today. Today, we see the beauty of Jesus’ words through a review of of the thread that weaves through his last six otherwise isolated proverbs in his Sermon on the Mount.

Today, we see the beauty of trust as the path to fulfilling our desires.

Source Scripture

Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13-15 
Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-32
Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 6:37-42
Matthew 7:6
Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13
Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31

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We long to be seen and celebrated for that which is deeply good and worthwhile in us, and we long for a love that is strong enough to contain our frailty and sinfulness. Something in us knows such love is a transforming power.  - Ruth Haley Barton

When Adam and Eve hid from God amidst the trees of the Garden of Eden, clad with fig leaves sewn by trembling fingers, they for the first time in their lives feared being in the presence of God. Before the fall of paradise, they were unashamed to be fully seen and known. But now, they lived with a new reality: to be fully known came coupled with the horrifying dread of rejection. 

And as they shuddered in the shadows, God called to them. He came to them. And though their shame was as much their own making as their fig leaf coverings, God gently took away both - covering them with love and the skins of of the first creature to ever die.

God’s love enveloped both their worth and their failure, held in the tension between the curses of Paradise Lost and the promise of paradise regained through a future descendant of Eve.

We live in that fallen state - it infects us today. We long equally to be fully known and fully loved, yet we believe the former inherently negates the latter. This leaves us in a terrible state, for we see the love really want on one horizon and who we really are on the other. Trapped in desperation of a world of our own making, we hopelessly run toward one or the other. To run toward love, we believe, we must cloak and costume our true selves, leading inevitably to a false version of love for a false version of ourselves. 

And when we can take no more of this, we turn back toward the other horizon, back to ourselves. But, where is this place from whence we came? The landscape looks different now than when we left. We are lost. We search desperately for who we really are, but in so doing the more we discover leads us farther and farther away from the love of anyone who could ever embrace what we find.

And yet, what we do not see or grasp as we run back and forth like little flatlanders who can fathom only two dimensions, a divine voice cries out from above in love, asking the same question asked of Adam and Eve. Where are you?

God’s love seeks us. It searches us out. God is love, and He is capable of loving us fully and knowing us fully, awakening us to and rescuing us from the torturous, writhing, fallen state of forever believing we must choose between experiencing love and being seen for who we are.

Once rescued, we find paradise regained. All we ever desired returns to us.

And then - we find ourselves with one new desire - the desire to do for others what was done for us.

This is the golden rule of engagement.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31

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Desire is so fundamental to our nature that we often overlook its significance. Its guiding force. We are created - designed - to desire and to be satisfied.

Desire and satisfaction were part of Paradise before the fall. When God created the world and saw that it was good, he rested. When Adam and Eve worked the garden each day, they would stop in the evening and walk in the cool of the day beside the divine God of the Universe. And when they were hungry, they found satisfaction from taking the fruit of any tree in the garden.

Except one, of course.

The serpent injected venom into Eve's desires and bent them toward the forbidden. Forget God and what He said, the serpent suggested, and become like him by eating from this tree.

Eve, having then entertained the idea of going against God's guidance, looked at the fruit of the tree. The Scriptures say she saw three things that she desired: she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom. 

And so, in an attempt to satisfy those desires, she took the forbidden fruit. And ate it. And then gave some to Adam, who was standing next to her.

Adam and Eve abandoned their natural, divine provisions that would naturally meet their desires and grasped for something outside the realm of God's desire.

And yet, though we call this event the Fall - or Paradise Lost - what we find is God's desire only beginning to reveal itself. God came to the garden in the cool of the day to find Adam and Eve, desiring to walk with them. He called to them when he could not find them, desiring their presence. And once they confessed their sin, He covered their shame with animal skins that he sacrificed, desiring to relieve their shame. He handed down discipline and ejected them from the garden, but left them alive and well, desiring to continue to be a part of their lives. And the rest of Scripture is the story of God's divine pursuit - his holy desire - to win us back from doing the same thing over and over again - trying to gratify our desires with anything other than Him and His provision.

God's desire is us. And when we loosen our grip on the forbidden fruit and take our eyes off its deceptive appearances, we find that what we really desire ourselves is God. And when God's desires and ours converge, Paradise is regained.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13

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Change the prevailing mode of consciousness and you change the world. Theodore Roszak

The prevailing mode of consciousness today might be captured in the word materialism. Philosophical materialism suggests that all that matters is matter, and everything that occurs does so strictly within the material world.

Practical materialism, which flows from its philosophical wellspring, focuses on the acquisition, manipulation, and removal of material objects based on their usefulness.

A better term for this prevailing mode of consciousness that is rooted in philosophical materialism might be objective consciousness. 

In layman's terms: Where's my stuff? I want stuff. I need stuff. But not that stuff.

Objective consciousness limits us to see, live, and act only within the physical world of stuff. Of things. 

Beyond the stuff of earth, however, is a realm of awe and wonder. The spiritual world. The plane of existence where we experience love, joy, peace, gratitude, hope, and communion with the divine.

The membrane that separates these two worlds can only be permeated by shedding the entirety of the material world, including and especially the center of it all - the self.

To the self, this appears as a mythical fantasy at best or suicidal mission at worst. And so, any invitation to cross the threshold is met with dismissal or attack. 

So how does anyone trapped in the prevailing consciousness of the material, objective world ever see the truth of what lies beyond?

There is one - and only one - spiritual substance that can penetrate the physical world and shine light that illuminates the path between these two world

And that substance is the focus of today's episode.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:6

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One of the most harmful and yet least examined impulses of human nature is that of judgement. In silent milliseconds, we can observe a fellow human being and decide if he is worthy or unworthy, right or wrong, good or bad.

And with that judgement, just as quietly but more deadly, we condemn. We From our judge's chair while draped in our robes of black, we pass one of the many sentences available to us in our play book. 

Rather than turn the other cheek, we turn our back. Rather than go the extra mile, we force them to. We hurl insults. We raise our hands in obscene gestures. We steal back what is supposedly ours. We open the floodgates of rage into our hearts and with our minds we justify the mental, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse that we heap on our accused.

And as we pass judgement and condemnation on the other, we silently and often unknowingly hold up our get-out-of-jail-free card - the one we earned by being right, righteous, good, better. We choose to be our own judge, and we always find ourselves innocent.

At stake here is not who is right and who is wrong. What is at stake is you - your state of being. The desire to set the world right is a God-given desire implanted in us. It is etched in the imago dei of our souls. 

But the fulfillment of that holy desire does not and cannot come from judgement. Judgement arises from egoistic pride, arrogance, entitlement, and a withering connection to the sacred. 

It is time to bring the oft-overlooked act of judgement into the light and let it be judged for what it is. It is time to acknowledge and take the beam out of our own eye. The good news is that we have a Judge who is willing to both forgive us and to teach us his way of forgiveness - freeing us to walk this earth in peace and love.

To err is human, to forgive divine.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 6:37-42

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The ruthless elimination of worry is key to peace in the present moment.

We worry when we direct our focus to something we want beyond our current grasp of control. We cannot abide the uncertainty of achieving our goal, and this state of consciousness produces anxiety.

We then believe that to overcome anxiety and find peace, we must create methods and procure resources that provide us with the right amount of power and control.

The curious state we now find ourselves in is one of double anxiety. To get what we want, we must first get something else, and we worry about the prospect of obtaining both.

If we do not question this default approach to living, we will succumb to its relentless grip on our soul and live in either the anxiety of either acquiring control or preserving it. The present moment will remain elusive as future concerns usurp it.

Worry is the enemy of peace. Of shalom. Of bliss. Worry aspires to be hope, but falls far short because it has no one to hope in beyond the self-centered ego. 

When we are free of worry, we experience the bliss of of what really matters: the present moment. The naked now. We find ourselves trusting in God’s providence, resting in his promises, and able to experience the joy of His presence and the presence of others.

The present moment is a most auspicious occasion, and with it today we will pursue the ruthless elimination of worry.

Source Scripture

Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-32

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Within us is a yearning to experience being - life in its fullest capacity. This divine desire propels us on a quest to find - to seize those experiences that bring us closer to true being.

And yet, too often in our haste to experience the fullness of life, we conflate the spiritual well that activates and actualizes being with tactile, temporal offerings. The call of rich, meaningful, inner experiences of being available to us drowns in the cacophony of materialistic voices without. And the more we lose touch with ourselves, the deeper we wade into the waters of materialism until eventually the riptides of greed and lust pull us ever further away from the shore of our own soul.

Our materialistic pursuits, though they vary in tone and texture, all converge at this apex: money. Money becomes the well from which we draw in order to satisfy our materialistic goals. And without even realizing it, we have now strayed so far from the shore that we cannot even see it, choking on saltwater in a futile effort to slake our thirst. We have conflated our desire for being with the lust for material things, and we have further decided that to have what we want, we must have money to get it.

In most cases, we don’t question this mode of living at all. At best, we comfort ourselves by donating a small percentage of our money to what we deem our worthy causes. At worst - we are at our worst - slaves to the master of money as we plod forward in our erroneous belief that money buys things and attracts people that will fulfill our innermost longings.

But you can’t smell the roses when you’re lost at sea.

The only way we escape the clutches of money is to return to the shores of our soul and begin the trek inland, exploring the true, rich, fulfilling, divine experiences of being that await until they enrapture us and we forget all else - including and especially money.

Source Scripture

Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13-15 

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Meaningless Incense

As the science vs. faith battle wages to determine who is right and what is real, what each can miss in this philosophical tournament is the opportunity to lift up their eyes and see beyond the coliseum that hosts it - and walk outside, leaving the weapons and armor of the game behind and embracing the search for being.

Science creates rules that govern and limit how we see. Faith, a term which once meant something much more, finds itself reduced by modern Western thought to nothing more than another set of rules, creeds, and systematic theology - a flattened version of what it really is.

Faith, in its essence, is not a set of rules. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

Faith is knowing that the deepest, truest desires within us are real. This means that our longing for love, transcendence, meaning, purpose,  acceptance, and connection to the divine is not an unrealistic outlook. Faith gives us confidence that these desires are the most genuine thing about us.

And faith is the assurance that these longings, which cannot be seen with the eyes of objective consciousness, can be trusted to lead us to their fulfillment. And they can be trusted precisely because the divine, transcendent God who created us planted these inherent desires within us. He designed us with these invisible desires to seek Him so that he can fulfill them all in communion with him.  

And all we have to do is to see this truth in our spirit, accepting it by faith.

Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6

Source Scripture

Matthew 6:1

Matthew 6:2-4

Matthew 6:5-15; Luke 11:1-4

Matthew 6:16-18

Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:33-34

Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:33-36

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When our inner being is filled with divine light, our eyes emanate that light, and help us navigate this life in truth and love. But when our inner being is full of darkness, our eyes will be equally dark, and everything we do will will be nothing more than stumbling in that darkness.

Today we focus on the connection between being and doing, and keeping the inner fire burning so that we see clearly to light the world.

Source Scripture

Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:33-36

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Paradise Now - Tim Mackie of The Bible Project

Created things pull us outside ourselves. We fix our attention on objects, and so our mode of consciousness becomes objective. We assume that the pursuit of the external will, in return, bring us reward as the objects of our attention come to us.

And yet, no matter how hard we try, the external cannot cross the threshold into our inner being and satisfy our real need. Possessions can go no further than an ephemeral caress of the ego. And this maddening tease drives us to toss aside one failed object for the next, leading us on an endless and fruitless pursuit.

Saint Augustine awakened from objective consciousness, from his madding pursuit of created things, to discover that looking outside himself for meaning only drew him away from himself.  And the way back to himself was to yield to the divine call that comes only from within.

Today, we turn our attention away from created things out there - letting go of objective consciousness - and look toward the treasure that lie within, where the Creator of all things calls to us.

Source Scripture

Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:33-34

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)

Paradise Now - Tim Mackie of The Bible Project