Category: Wisdom

“Idleness is the enemy of the soul: and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.” – St. Benedict of Nursia (The Rule of St. Benedict)

Prayer and work was the ideal for the Benedictine monk. But it also applies to The hermit. The hermit also should alternate between prayer and work. For idleness is the enemy of the soul.

Even after retirement, one should find work to do, whether working on a garden or volunteering at a soup kitchen. For the rhythm of life includes rest and work, action and inaction. It is the work that enriches the rest.

Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

In order to have a better society, we need better citizens. You improve the community if you improve the individual.

Better Citizens

If you want a better world, you first need to have better humans.

But how? The golden rule. Jesus said,:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Matt. 5:43-44)

Love is Not a Feeling

This love, which is agape in Greek, is not a feeling, it’s an act of the will. It pursues the highest good of another person without thought of reward and irrespective of who it is. Love knows no exceptions.

By adopting a disposition of loving kindness towards all people we can change the world. This is how heaven is. We will never achieve this on earth, but we can aim for it. Even the pursuit will make this existence a better place for some people.

I want to let you in on a little secret, you don’t get wise by just living.

You might think that old age brings forth wisdom, it does not. Even experience doesn’t help some folks.

Wisdom requires a level of self-reflection and self-doubt that is far too uncomfortable for many people.

Many people would rather be right than to be wise.

Wisdom begins not in knowledge, but in knowing that you don’t know. The four most powerful words in the English language are, “I do not know.”

They say that the larger your pool of knowledge, the greater your shores of ignorance.

It’s true.

Too many Christians trade a faith troubled by doubt, for a doubt troubled by faith. If this faith walk was easy everyone would be walking, but then if would have little value.

A faith that can’t be tested, can’t be trusted.

Good things are worth working for. A faith that can’t be tested, can’t be trusted. Faith is not believing certain things about God, faith is a wholehearted truth in God. A trust the endures the questions.

And questions will come, especially if you want to know the truth. It is only in the dark that your trust in your Guide can really be tested. It is when God makes no sense that we must trust the most.

It is in the hard times that we grow the most.

I wish I could tell you it will all work out. But I can’t. What appears bad to us may be good from a higher perspective. I don’t say this as a platitude. It is true. It is in the hard times that we grow the most.

Muscle is built by pushing and pulling against resistance. It is called resistance training. Likewise faith is built by trusting in the hard times, when things make no sense. There is no other way to build trust than in trusting when it makes no sense to trust.

No pain, no gain.

No pain, no gain. Pain tells you were self is still alive. Only the living feels pain, the dead do not. Once you are completely death to self the pain will cease. But this is usually a long journey with many small mortifications.

As we turn the page on another year, we must face the uncertainty. Welcome to the end of the world and the beginning of something new.

We Can’t Go Back

We can’t go back, nor should we want to. For Jesus said, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. We need to be “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead” (Phil 3:13). For God wants to “do a new thing” (Isa. 43:20).

Let Go of the Past

But we must let go of the past. Forgive and forget, or else we will never be free to go on with God. God wants to take you deeper, are you willing?

Every step we take is either moving us closer to God and His plan for our life, or we are taking a detour.

Embrace the Pain

Embrace the pain, the suffering. It is the only way to find freedom. I know it doesn’t make sense.

The way out is the way through. It’s the paradox of the spiritual world. What we resist, persists. What we fear we create. And the way to be strong is to be weak.