Chapter 7 pt. 5
The Rule of St. Benedict January 29
In St. Luke's gospel, Jesus describes the "good soil" in the Parable of the Sower as "the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance." Goodness in soil is a set of conditions that can come and go and that, without perseverance in maintaining them, are likely to be lost.
As our Father Benedict seeks to orient our hearts towards a pervasive awareness of God's presence in our every moment, he admonishes us to beware of the strong forces within us that would rather operate without the awareness of God. It is our lusts, our desires that overpower our ability to act reasonably from an honest and good heart, that compromise the conditions of our good soil and prevent us from bearing the fruit we are called to bear into the world. And if there is anything in the human experience that requires patient endurance and our best effort, it is dealing with the strong forces within us that pull our gaze from the steady gaze of God.
But God does not leave us alone in this effort. This passage mentions the role of angels as agents of God's care. The overwhelming theme of this first step of humility is that we are not alone in our lives, and we ought not pretend that we are. We move and have our being in realms seen and unseen.
Br. Chad 2013
Persistence or perseverance...hmm!
ReplyDeleteThe first it seems would have t0 do with the act of continually working unrelentingly with a determination that has some joy included in the commitment to complete an agreed upon task.
Perseverance seems to be more related to enduring, no matter what,come what may, to the end, my commitment. Even if I am bloody and sore and my soul is blistered, I'm going to make it through to the end.
Joy of course means more than happiness, although happiness is very much a part of joy. When the writer Nehemiah states "the joy of the lord is your strength", he is speaking of pleasure yes, but not only pleasure. He is saying the Lord has blessed you this day, so eat some good food, have a nice glass of wine, share with those who have less than you or nothing. Then Rest in the knowledge that the Lord has blessed you and will consistently care for you and take care of your needs as you carry on in His knowledge and work.
This to me, is persistence. I have the joy of knowing that God will care for me as I live, move and have my being in the Lord my Creator. In personal experience I have experienced Perseverance as something that God has asked me to do that I don't really want to do. But if I don't do it am going to be miserable and eaten up with guilt for not doing it. So...I might as well go ahead and do it and please God, and be miserable while I am doing it, since I cannot really escape it either way.
I had to learn a bit about Hope to resolve the situation.
I discovered that Hope is Joyful Expectation.
In Persistence there is Hope. It is Hope that is not hidden in the words, "If I can only get through this..."
No..this Hope is an expectant hope of faith that tells me that I am not on this life's journey alone. Hope that can expect God to keep God's Word. Hope that is wrapped in joy, in strength, in the attitude of praise and thanksgiving. Hebrews 11:1 tells us, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.(NRSV) Another translation says it like this, " Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."(KJV) Our faith then becomes the very building blocks for the manifestation of what we joyfully expect.
Persistence then, has packed inside of it this hope, this joyful expectation. If God has called us to do a work for Him, everything we need to do the work is already at our finger tips just when we need it.
It seems that I knew all this at one time and then I forgot for a while. I was merely persevering through the thought of Ministry and it's call on my life. Much of my living life, has been ministry, just by the nature in which I was created; even if sometimes it seemed it was by accident. I have given my self permission once again, in the spirit of joyful expectation, to look at the full range of what God has planned for my life in the loving of others.
Peace, Light, Joy,
Brother Rawleigh