Indeed, if the economic admonitions of the Lord’s Prayer and the other parts of this sermon were actually practiced, the needs that we worry about — “what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body what you will wear” — such needs would be eliminated.
“Just do my will; it is enough.” And to this I would always reply in a very down-to-earth way: “It’s easy for you to say! I just can’t do it. It’s not enough for me. I need a reward. If it’s not people’s good thoughts, if it’s not the applause, if it’s not my image, then I must have something.
Jesus invites his followers into a path of aggressive, shrewd nonviolent resistence.
Jesus invites us to look at our hearts, and be disarmed. Whenever we look at another person with lust, we realize that our thoughts are God’s possession. We drag God into our own adultery. Nevertheless, God does not reject or abandon us. God loves us even as we foul God.
“Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?” “Doubtless they are,” spoke Norris, opening his sermon.
There is an old saying that I have ambivalent feelings about: “Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”
The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.
My crippling myth is that if I get a little extra time, and if I work hard and fast enough, I’ll catch up and get it all done.
Thomas Keating describes the false self as three energy centers within us, which motivate us to act to satisfy our ego’s exaggerated needs.
But Paul was trapped in a condition of anxiety. Performance anxiety. He did his best, but was it good enough? And maybe he had done everything right yesterday, what about today? …and tomorrow? What if he missed something? What if he let his guard down for even a moment?