Showing posts with label Corrie ten Boom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Corrie ten Boom. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

9th September Trinity 2010, Fortune-Telling

9th August Trinity
Matthew 6; 19-34

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.


So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.


9th August/September Trinity
Sept. 19, 2010
Matthew 6: 19-34

The time from St. Johnstide in June to Michaelmas at the end of September is a time of being outward bound. It is traditionally the time for vacations, for travel, for time outdoors in nature and with family. It is also often the time when people move, to take on a new job, to start school.  But even if nothing changes outwardly, inwardly this is the time for the soul to tread a path; a time to open the soul, to see and hear freshly, and on new levels. It is a time for the healing our inner ills.

St. John the Baptist urged us to change our hearts and minds. With today’s reading, Christ urges us to take a closer look at our own interior landscape, to look at how we think. For the quality of our thinking, the quality of our hearts, seriously shapes our progress on the path of our healing.

We can entertain thoughts that are healthy, or those that are unhealthy. One unhealthy form of thinking is called, by those in the soul-work field, fortunetelling. This is our human tendency to extrapolate, to project what is happening today onto the future. It may well be naïve to assume that since everything is fine today, it will be fine tomorrow as well. But it is downright destructive to our mental and spiritual health to assume that since today is troubling, I have to worry and stress about tomorrow's troubles, and the next day’s, and the next as well.

Such unhealthy thinking is based on an untrue assumption—that I can already know what the future will bring. And it is supported by another sneaking suspicion—that I won’t be able to handle what the future brings without continuous rehearsals for supposed disasters.

Corrie Ten Boom
Corrie Ten Boom[1], whose family harbored Jews in Holland during the War, tells the story her own father used, to illustrate the wisdom of staying in the now, in the moment. When as a young girl she began to stress about the future, her father asked her to recall their train trips together. 'When do I give you your ticket?' he asked. 'When the train pulls into the station,' she replied. 'Indeed. I don’t give you your ticket when the train is still miles away. I give it to you when you need it, when the train arrives. When you worry, it is as though you grab your ticket long before the train is due, and run miles up the track to try to catch it before it arrives. God will give you your ticket for the future when the future arrives.'

We can be sure that we will meet the future with ripened capacities, especially if we can concentrate our efforts at solving today’s troubles, doing today what we can do today. For no pit is too deep that the love of God is not deeper still.

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[1] Corrie Ten Boom, Her Story, (The Hiding Place, Tramp for the Lord, Jesus is Victor)—three biographical stories in one volume.