Lent, Day 17: DEEP WITHIN

Scripture:   Psalm 84 

Focus on the Word

Today, we are invited to hear the words of the great Quaker saint, Thomas Kelley (1893-January 17, 1941), a man who truly did hunger and thirst for righteousness.  

    There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once.  On one level, we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs.  But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.

    The secular world of today values and cultivates only the first level, assured that there is where the real business of mankind is done, and scorns, or smiles in tolerant amusement, at the cultivation of the second level.  But in a deeply religious culture, men know that the deep level of prayer and of divine attendance is the most important thing in the world.  It is at this deep level that the real business of life is determined. 

    The secular mind is an abbreviated, fragmentary mind, building only upon a part of man's nature and neglecting a part - the most glorious part - of man's nature, powers, and resources. 

    The religious mind involves the whole of man, embraces his relations with time within their true ground and setting in the Eternal Lover.  It ever keeps close to the fountains of divine creativity.  In lowliness it knows joys and stabilities, peace and assurances, that are utterly incomprehensible to the secular mind.  It lives in resources and powers that make individuals radiant and triumphant, groups tolerant and bonded together in mutual concern, and is bestirred to an outward life of unremitting labor.

- taken from A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly

In Lent may we draw near to God so that our lives may be caught up into the very life of Jesus.  

Today’s Prayer

O God, seeing as there is in Christ Jesus an infinite fullness of all that we can want or desire, May we all receive from him, grace upon grace; grace to pardon our sins, and subdue our iniquities; to justify our persons and to sanctify our souls; and to complete that holy change, that renewal of our hearts, Which will enable us to be transformed into the blessed image in which you created us. O make us all acceptable to be partakers of the inheritance of your saints in light.     Amen.                                             (A prayer of John Wesley)