You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
The life of the spirit, by integrating us in the real order established by God, puts us in the fullest possible contact with reality – not as we imagine it, but as it really is.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
1 John 1:5, Ignatius Bible
Last Friday’s post, a prayer for eternal life, takes me on a journey from knowing God to loving, trusting, and obeying him. It starts with knowing because how can I love him if I don’t know him?
I think the apostle John, “the one whom Jesus loved”, is all about helping us know God so we can love him, fellowship with him, abide in him. In this passage he lays out the basics: God is all light (all flame) – there is not a hint of darkness in him. He says to us essentially, “Children, if you sense darkness, that isn’t God; you will know him because he is the one who is all light, all good, all truth, all love.”
Grace and peace to us as we learn to know and love our gracious and good God.
dw
p.s. For any who want to look back at other posts on the theme of light and darkness, here is a guide:
This is a prayer I go to when I feel the need to get back to the basics of being a child of God, of being the light of the world, of becoming all flame. (Yes, I should pray this every day…I really should.)
I hope it is a help and blessing to you.
dw
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
Psalm 51:10-12, Ignatius Bible
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
I mess up.
All the time.
Each time is a temptation to beat myself up. I do this very well from much practice.
Over the last couple of years I’ve tried, instead, to pray this prayer or others like it; I find it better to invoke God’s help to change rather than to just try harder on my own.
King David messed up big time; I mean BIG time (read about it in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12). Psalm 51 records his prayer after being called out on it.
I need these words in my heart and on my tongue; maybe you do, too.
Grace and peace to you…
dw
becoming flame 