Compassionate Heart – definition:
A person who is standing in snow with the temperature at 12 degrees who feels compassion for those who are in Florida standing in the rain with the temperature at 35 degrees.
This morning’s readings from The Reason for God and Pilgrim Heart yielded several quotes which I found to be particularly worthy of some further consideration:
If I am a grass field – all the cutting will keep the grass less but it won’t produce wheat. If I want wheat … I must be plowed up and re-sown. C. S. Lewis quoted in The Reason for God
When one stands at the crossroad looking for direction, one should ask: Who are my companions on the journey? Who challenges my thinking? Who interrogates and exposes my hidden motives, my pride, my blind spots, my selfish desires? Who keeps me honest? To whom am I listening with utmost attention? Pilgrim Heart
… spiritual maturity means living with a certain level of uncertainity and an honest awareness of our own suspect motives. Walking by faith means that we do not enjoy full sight or absolute certainty. We “trust and obey” as we peer through the glass darkly. Trust implies risk and – in the short term – even apparent failure. Pilgrim Heart
… it becomes problematic to try to measure the value of a life close at hand. Pilgrim Heart
This morning we awoke to a heavy frost on the grass. The temperatures continued to linger 15-20 degrees below normal. I suspect there will be a lot of damage to landscape plants and flowers. The upside is that it is sunny and temps will reach the fifties today. Another round of colder weather is moving in this weekend.
Tonight is special as Alabama and Texas play for the national championship. I have mixed loyalties. Alabama being my home state and Texas being such a large part of our lives makes for a hard choice, but I must say Roll Tide. I expect it to be a great game and will enjoy it regardless of who wins.
Despite the cold weather, I am enjoying our time in Florida. I am getting to read a lot and walking and riding my bike regularly. As the weather improves, I expect to catch up on some fishing. It is really hard to complain when I see what the weather is like back in Kentucky.
From Pilgrim Heart:
… Lewis Smedes observes: “We do not have to be bad persons to do bad things. If only bad people did bad things to other people we would live in a pretty good world. We hurt people by our bungling as much as we do by our vices.” Ironically, our very decency – our desire to be “good people” – can compound our capacity to hurt others. Semdes observes shrewdly, “the more decent we are the more acutely we feel our pain for the unfair hurts we caused. Our pain becomes our hate. The pain we cause other people becomes the hate we feel for ourselves. For having done them wrong. We judge, we convict, and sentence ourselves. Mostly in secret.
Since “none is righteous, no, not one.” healing comes when we recognize that we are not outside the set of sinners, that we have failed time and time again, and will fail again – yet God’s grace is sufficient, even for us.
As we were driving down I75 Saturday at about 75 mph, I noticed this honey bee hanging on to the outside of my side window. The wind was whipping him furiously but he clung for all he was worth. It was amazing that he could attach himself to the slick glass surface and not be swept away.
It occurred to me that there are people like that bee; whose lives are such that the only thing they can do is just hang on.