A Day At A Time - Reflection For The Day
For a good part of my life, I saw things mostly in negative terms. Everything was serious, heavy, or just plain awful. Perhaps now I can truly change my attitude, searching out the winners in The Program who have learned how to live comfortably in the real world — without numbing their brains with mood-altering chemicals. If things get rough today, can I take a quiet moment and say to myself, as the philosopher Homer once said, “Bear patiently, my heart — for you have suffered heavier things…”?
Today I Pray
May the peace of God that passes all human understanding fill the place within me that once harbored my despair. May an appreciation for living — even for life’s trials — cancel out my old negative attitudes in heart-heavy moments, help to remind me that my heart was once much heavier still.
Today I Will Remember
I, to, am a winner.
There are many good things I could say about this, and that prayer is one that I should make my own. So why is it that my first thought as I finished reading the last line was, "you're a winner, but you can't spell 'too.'" There I sat, trying to start my day off right, reading various spiritual and motivational ideas after beginning everything with prayer and some quiet time with God, and before I even get half way through the morning quiet time I am defaulting to being a critical, fault-finding jerk. Which raised two questions for me.
The first is why? The second came on the heels of the first, most likely as an escape route from the first question. "Who did it hurt?" Seriously, did my negativity hurt the author of this reading? No. They couldn't hear or feel what I thought. Even if they were to read this blog, a highly unlikely even, I am not putting them down, but rather showing a defect within myself. After all, the error doesn't negate the message they were sharing, is quite probably a typo rather than a sign of ignorance of the difference between to and too, and could have even been the fault of whoever transferred the reading to the website I found it on and not the author.
So who was I hurting by jumping on the error before contemplating the message? The easy answer is no one. I could simply go ahead and think on the message and move on as though the thought never occurred. But the not so easy answer to the question, the truth, is it hurts me. My morning time is spent in an effort to improve my conscious contact with God, and it's hard to improve fellowship with someone while you are acting in direct opposition to their very nature.
No one reading this is perfect. No one I encounter in life is perfect, and that includes me, especially before I have my morning coffee and the first smoke of my pipe. But God is perfect. God is the only one who has the right to look at the rest of us and point out how we fail to measure up.
Yet, He doesn't do that. He looks at us imperfect and broken people through eyes with love and grace filters on. When He sees our shortcomings, it is not to put us down or to condemn us, but rather to acknowledge the simple truth that we fell short while simultaneously pointing out that He provided a way to restore us, to make us more than we could ever make ourselves. If I truly desire to be closer to Him and to be more and more like Him every day, I must look at myself and others through eyes of love and grace.
All too often I fall so short of that. The truth that I don't always show love and grace brings me back to my first question of why. There are many possible surface answers. At times I put others down in order to try to feel better about myself. See? I'm smart enough to see this or that or to see that you're wrong. I know better than you do so I must be better than you. This sounds like pride, but it really comes from a place of feeling less than and wanting to build myself up. Or I might put others down so that I fit in or become more acceptable to a person or group who is also putting that person down. Here the issue becomes approval seeking. Or a root of anger and bitterness could sprout into a weed that chokes the love in my heart causing me to be critical just because negativity within produces negative fruit.
But the deeper truth is that a critical spirit is caused by a lack of understanding, acceptance and nurturing of love. It is a love deficiency. When I see that I am valued and loved by God, as I am, then I don't need to build myself up through any means, especially by tearing others down. God's love builds me up, becomes my measure of my worth. When I love God with a full heart, totally and completely, it becomes His approval I want and need above all else, and the approval of others stops being a motivation in my life, so that I no longer compromise that which I know is right, such as how I am to treat others, in order to belong or fit in with people. And when I refuse to love and forgive, I water the seeds of anger and bitterness and resentment that will make it impossible for the love that I have been given to produce the fruits of grace, mercy, tenderness, compassion and love.
A critical spirit is a love barometer. When I am full of love and walking in love toward God, myself and my fellows, and walking in an understanding of God's love for me, then I will not bear the fruits of criticism and condemnation. The less love I am living the more I see a critical spirit grow within me and begin to show in my thoughts, words and actions.
I don't have to beat myself up over this, and neither do you, dear reader. For those of us who default to fault finding and tearing others down, we can be grateful that we understand what it means. Use the barometer as an indicator to avoid the storm. When the critical spirit reveals itself, as it did for me this morning, and we recognize it for what it is, we can turn to love as the answer and defense.
Daddy God, I thank You for revealing to me that I have somehow allowed my fuel of love to get low. I see the warning sign flashing, and I am stopping to refuel rather than pushing on. Pump me full of Your love and an understanding of that love. Help me to recognize and accept Your love for me, and help me to see Your love for others. Fill me so full of Your love that I can do nothing other than have that love overflow onto those I encounter in my life. Instead of being quick to find fault, help me to see the good and positive and to react with grace and mercy and compassion towards others. Help me to love You more. Help me to live out the prayer of St, Francis....
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