Wisdom from Above

 But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. 

It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, 

and willing to yield to others.

It is full of mercy and good deeds. 

It shows no favoritism and is always sincere

 And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace

 and reap a harvest of righteousness.

James 3:17-18 (NLT)

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you?

  Isn't it the whole army of evil desires at war within you? 

James 4:1 (NLT)

Our human nature always gets us into trouble.  There is an army of evil desires at war within us, ready to fight and argue, ready to start war. The response of that old nature is usually negative, critical and judgmental.  It is hard and unforgiving, causing heartache and pain.  Our old self is an expert at rationalizing and excusing all kinds of sin like pride and selfishness.  When we give it a voice, what enormous damage it can do.

The wisdom from above, on the other hand, gives rise to good deeds that spring from pure motives.  It creates peace and handles every situation with a gentle spirit that is willing to yield.  It doles out large quantities of mercy and forgiveness.  Instead of causing war and destruction, under the influence of this wisdom, we become peacemakers, planting good seeds wherever we go. What a contrast!

We all make many mistakes and we are sometimes blind to them.  When we ask for God's light to shine on us, we may discover areas where our motives are not pure, where we have been hard and unyielding, where we have justified ourselves, or used words that have hurt another.  When we come to that realization and confess it to God, he promises to forgive us, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and lead us along a better path.

Lord, thank you that our old nature was crucified on the cross when you died.  Help us not to give voice to it, but to yield to your wisdom from above.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

 and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalms 189:23-24 (NIV)

Anne Rice on Love

Let love be your highest goal!

1 Cor 14:1 (NLT)

Today some quotes from Anne Rice who, in her autobiography Called Out of Darkness, a spiritual confession, tells the story of her return to faith.  Her childhood, filled with the beautiful images of churches and chapels and statues and pictures and Mass and the sounds of Latin hymns, engendered in her a sincere faith as a child.  At the age of nineteen she walked away and lived as an atheist for thirty-eight years.  During that period she was a popular and successful writer of supernatural tales of vampires, witches and devils, each tale reflecting her own spiritual search.  Those early childhood images eventually drew her back until her faith was restored at the age of fifty-seven.

Here she writes of the struggle to love and not judge. 

“How has returning to Christ actually influenced your life?”  I found myself thinking about this and then answering:  "It demands of me that I love people."  This was a turning point, this simple acknowledgment.  Because I began then to realize what the message of Christ was for me:  to love my friends and to love my enemies.  And the mystery was that loving my friends was sometimes harder than loving my enemies. 

And that if one loved both, completely and sincerely, and if one could convince others to do this as well, one could, theoretically, bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

And something came clear to me that had never been clear before.  Loving our neighbors and our enemies is perhaps the very hardest thing that Christ demands.  It's almost impossible to love one's neighbors and enemies.  It's almost impossible to feel that degree of total giving to other human beings.  To practice the daily love of neighbor and enemy calls into question one's smallest and greatest competitive feelings, one's common angry reactions to slights both great and small.  In sum, the will to love all human beings must pervade every thought, word, and deed.

I am a baby Christian when it comes to loving.  I am just learning.  Again and again, I fail because of temper and pride.  I fail because it is so easy to judge someone else rather than love that person.  And I fail because I cannot execute the simplest operations - answering an angry e-mail for instance - in pure love. 

This is Christianity!  If it isn’t Christianity, then what can Christianity possibly be?  It’s the toughest way to live that there is.*

*Rice, Anne, Called Out of Darkness, a spiritual confession, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), pp. 223-228.