Blog 106 January 7, 2019
MIRACLES NEVER CEASE ~ DO YOU HAVE AN EXPERIENCE TO SHARE? Robert Wise would be delighted to learn about your divine intervention. If you have a story to share, please contact him at revwise@att.net. He’s looking forward to hearing from you.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Do we need a miracle as this new year begins? I guess so!
Everywhere we look we find chaos, hatred, fear, and political disaster. The year ended with the worst stock market drop since the Great Depression. The president has shut down the government and no one knows when it will open. The president’s closest legal advisers are off to jail and the scandal over payments over his affairs with two women is cooking while Congress waits for Robert Mueller’s Investigative Report. The frightening headlines go on and on.
So, where shall we turn? Rather than another account of a divine intervention in someone’s life, let me offer some insight that could have a miraculous affect in our lives. I believe the insights will help.
Setting the scandals and disagreements aside, we can start this year on an entirely different basis. Thomas Merton in his essay The Root of War is Fear has some important insight for us.
At the root of all war is fear, not so much the fear people have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another: they do not even trust themselves. If they are not sure when someone else may turn around and kill them, they are still less sure when they may turn around and kill themselves … It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves that is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves … Only love – which means humility- can exorcise the fear that is at the root of war.
Every time we turn on the television or follow news reports, we are swimming in a sea of anxiety. Violence, bombings, school shootings, terrorist reports, fear of environmental collapse, the Stock Market falling, on and on the sources of fear are constantly at our doorstep. We may need to know the information, but we don’t need the emotional impact.
Thomas Merton has important instruction for us. Let’s make a New Year’s resolution to push aside fear and decide to walk in the pathway marked love. Let’s decide to follow the headlines without being swallowed by anxiety. Let’s allow love to remain supreme in 2019.
Couldn’t that be a miracle?
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