Thank
you, Jim, for filling in for me while Jane and Zoey and I traveled to
Florida and back the past two weeks.
Here
are a few pictures from our trip.
*An
egret in front of our motel door
*View
from Jodie’s deck
*The
beach
*Shark
teeth
*Zoey
napping after a long day of play
*Yoder’s
Restaurant
Six of us went to dinner: Harriet,
David Cyril, Rita, Jane, and me. While we were waiting in line, after about on
half hour (it was one hour before we were seated!) I said to Cyril, “I hope
you’re a patient man because this looks like a long wait.”
Cyril said, “I’m not patient but I am
persistent.”
Persistence. I began to think about
persistence on and off in the days following Cyril’s remark. One of the things
I learned about Cyril, though not from him, was that he was a mine worker most
of his life. Years and years and years working below ground; yeah, I could see
where that would take persistence.
Persistence is a quality needed on the
spiritual path, too.
In what way are you spiritually persistent?
For me it’s in the application of forgiveness. Here’s a picture of the home
screen on my phone. (Home screen says: “Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness) I
am persistent with forgiveness. In what way are you spiritually persistent?
Here’s a story about a young boy and
how his persistence in the world paid off spiritually. I read the story in
Chicken Soup for the Soul – The Power of Positive.”
Hollye Dexter was playing Chutes and
Ladders with her four-year-old son Evan. The object of Chutes and Ladders is to
move 100 squares to the top corner of the board. Along the way there are
various lengths of ladders that you climb higher and chutes that will slide you
back to a lower square on the board. There is one chute that slides you back a
full 61 spaces!
Hollye
says that Evan was in a phase where he was obsessed with winning and losing.
When we would get out of the car, she wrote, he would dash to the door and say,
“I win Mommy and you lose.” Evan would
gulp his milk down and say, “I win Mommy and you lose.”
Eventually Hollye’s council about
being a gracious loser made an impact on Even. Now when he won and Hollye lost
at whatever Evan felt the need to compete about, he would pat her hand or pat
her on the back and say, albeit sweetly, “Congratulations, loser.”
On this particular day Hollye won the
game and Evan asked, “Aren’t you going to say to me ‘Congratulations loser’?”
Hollye encouraged Evan to finish the game. She said he look confused and said, “But
I lost, mommy.”
Then Hollye said this wonderful thing
to her son, “Just because someone makes it to the top first doesn’t mean the
rest of us lose. You keep going.” And so Evan continued to play the game. He
hit that long chute down several times before he reached the 100th
square. At first he was frustrated and eventually, Hollye writes, the setbacks
became amusing… but Evan persisted until he reached his goal.
Hopefully Evan’s lesson of persistence
and laughter at setbacks will translate into a spiritual lesson down the road
for him knowing, as Charles Fillmore says, “What
you earnestly desire and persistently affirm will be yours. Persistent
meditation on the Truth contained in the Word of God opens the mind to a
greater inflow of Spirit.”
What do you earnestly desire and
persistently affirm? Is it the same thing or do you desire one thing and affirm
another?
Earnestly desire and persistently
affirm.
Persistence
pays dividends.
I
earnestly desire internal peace and persistently affirm forgiveness. This is an
ongoing process for me. Sometimes my peace is disrupted and I have to
“reaffirm” forgiveness.
You
know that I say to you that whatever I am going to talk about on a Sunday I
frequently have an opportunity to prove it out the week before, or the week
following, the Sunday I talk about it. This past week was one of those weeks.
I
was sharing with a trusted friend how I had been overly trusting of someone who
was in constant struggle. I used to marvel at how bad luck followed this person
everywhere. I helped as often as I could with rides, grocery money, gas money,
etc. Then one week there were a string
of hard luck stories. I’ll cut to the chase here. I was duped. I believed that
in the past this person had fudged the facts to make the need look more
compelling, I was aware of that. All the stories, though, were vague in terms
of verifiable facts. This time the need came with hard, cold, facts and I
checked them out. None of the story was
true. It wasn’t untrue in the sense that some facts had been exaggerated.
It was untrue in the sense that the need and the near tears with which the
story was delivered, and the story itself, were a complete and utter
fabrication; a bald-faced lie.
So
here I was sharing this story with my friend and afterwards when I got home a
whole lot of old, self-debasing feelings came rushing into my mind where they
danced gleefully around singing my short comings and my “not-good-enoughness.
For being so easily “had.””
“Forgiveness
is the key to happiness”
This
where I “went” to find my peace again. Peace is what I earnestly desire.
Forgiveness is the key to internal peace and I persistently affirm it at every
opportunity, large and small.
Ask
yourself this the next time you have a few moments of quiet time, “What do I
deeply desire? What do I persistently affirm?”
Again,
the words of Mr. Fillmore, “We may talk
about the wisdom of God, but the love of God must be felt in the heart. It cannot be described, and one who has not
felt it can have no concept of it from the descriptions of others.”
If
you deeply desire to more fully feel the love of God, what can you do? Talk more about love, and it will grow
stronger in your consciousness. You can persist in thinking loving thoughts and
speaking loving words, and when you do, another kind of persistence appears.
The persistent experience of the indescribable feeling of the love of God.”
Like
Evan, be a finisher, be persistent in this, and become your deepest desire.
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