Chapter 4 (first session) Discipline

Chapter 4 referenced 7 scripture passages dealing with discipline in the Bible (with my personally assigned title for each passage):

• John 3:25-36 (Certifying God as truthful)
• Luke 12:35-48 (Readiness and Responsibility)
• Matthew 25:14-30 (Risk and rewards)
• Romans 12:1-2 (How to know God’s will)
• Luke 2:41-49 (Acting on God’s will)
• Deuteronomy 27:1-8 (Publishing God’s will)
• I Thessalonians 4:1-12 (Sanctification is God’s will)

The hymn for the week was "Sweet Will of God". (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Annie Dillard, Virginia Stem Owens, Emilie Griffin, Edward J. Farrell, Albert C. Outler, Tilden H. Edwards, Henri J. Nouwen, Evelyn Underhill and Brother Lawrence. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• …life … in time is not a stumbling from one ecstatic epiphany to another. The enormous task is to keep your eyes open, your wick trimmed, your lamp filled, your powder dry. … There are no two ways about it. You’ve got your eyes open or you don’t. … Whatever the great human enterprise currently in hand, the point is to watch. All the rest is addenda. Seeking the kingdom is the essential (thing).
• Prayer is a matter of keeping at it. The rewards will come no other way. … You should have it firm in your mind that prayer is neither to impress other people or to impress God. … The goal, in prayer, is to give oneself away. The Lord loves us – perhaps most of all – when we fail and try again.
• Prayer tomorrow begins today or there will be no prayer tomorrow. … Prayer is a journey, a path that is created only by walking in it. (Editor’s comment: Prayer is not a fly-over.) … Eventually one is led out to the desert where one discovers the new creation and becomes a new creature.
• The denying ourselves, and the taking up our cross, in the full extent of the expression, is not a thing of small concern: It is not expedient only, as are some of the circumstantials of religion: but it is absolutely, indispensably necessary, either to our becoming or continuing His disciples.
• …spiritual discipline…is to aid human digestion of the Holy, so that we do not 1) reject his nourishment, 2) throw it up by not allowing room inside for it, 3) mistake “artificial flavors” for the real thing, or 4) use its strength for building an ego empire.
• Yes, I notice, maybe only retrospectively, that my days and weeks are different days and weeks when they are held together by these regular “useless” times (time with God). God is greater than my senses, …thoughts, …heart. …when I feel this inner pull to return again to that (time with God), I realize that something is happening that is so deep that it becomes like the riverbed…
• …being a disciple means living a disciplined life…
• You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
• One way to recollect the mind easily in the time of prayer… is not to let it wander too far, …(but to) …keep it strictly in the presence of God.
• Some of us are more naturally night people or morning people. …Most important though is not the number of times or duration (of our prayers), but on deciding on some time and duration and sticking to it, at least for a trial period of a few weeks. …we treat it like brushing our teeth: it is just something we “do”, without agonizing over it each time.
  

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 3 not quoted) mean to you? I look forward to your responses.

John