Finding Your Treasure

DAY 23

LEARN TO LOVE YOUR LIFE

READ:  Isaiah 45:9-12

Woe to you who strive with your Maker,
earthen vessels with the potter!
Does the clay say to the one who fashions it,
“What are you making?”
or “Your work has no handles?”    Isaiah 45:9
In the fourth century, one of our great Christian mystics, Anthony, taught that knowing and loving ourselves helps us know and love God.  And knowing and loving God helps us love ourselves and other people.

And God said, I cannot show my love for
you completely unless you love yourself.
You are the vehicle for my love, directed
to you... In the past, some were channels
and they failed.  In the present, others
are transmitting.  But part of my love comes
to you... through you.

Your hands have made and fashioned me. Psalm 119:73

IN THE FIRING
I want to use you, my child
but first, prepare you:
place you on my potter's
wheel; center you; water you.

Do not be disturbed
by your cleansing
tears, while I spin
and shape you,
or afterward, when I place
you in the fire
and glaze, and fire
again, before I fill
you, my precious vessel.

PRAYER:  Thank you, my Creator God, who has made me and is making me anew every day.  I trust you to fill me with your love, that I might love you more deeply, and love the treasure of my life that you have given me.DAY 27    SHED OUTMODED SKINS

READ:  John 11:17-44

... he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.  Jesus said to them, “Unbind him,  and let him go.”

John 11:43-44

Just as Lazarus left his grave cloths behind, we need to leave ours, like a snake shedding its skin. In ancient times, people regarded snakes as symbols of healing. They perceived transformation in the shedding of outmoded skins.  When Jesus gave new life to Lazarus, bound in grave cloths, he instructed people around him to "Unbind him and let him go."

We may be in old skins that need to go. Shedding them ought not to be painful, unless we are keeping them alive by nourishing them: cherishing old grudges, or “what might have been.”  We can ask God whether something within us is enjoying anger, or a grudge, or self pity.  Nurturing the new skin underneath, helps us shed the old. 

After my father died, I lived with my maternal grandmother for a year and a half.  She openly showed her resentment for caring for me, a nine year old.  At the same time, I noticed she was tender and loving to my baby sister. I cannot condone her rejection, though I understand it.  I found my old skin of resentment difficult to shed.

I could cast it off only through a process of forgiving her, and growing love for my own grandchildren and my sister.  Friends also assisted by praying for me during my time of distress.

Unbind her and let her go
you said of me
bound in grave cloths of my past
like Lazarus constricted.
You gave new life, but
many loving hands and hearts
have helped unbind to let me go.

PRAYER:  Loving Father, if I have an old skin constricting me, I offer it to you right now.  (Name it)  I trust you to help me understand it, and grow the new life that sheds the old.  Thank you, my trustworthy God.