Day 155: Living Waters

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  John 7:37-38

I feel like these days there are people who are walking around with earplugs when they go to church or listen to the Gospel.

While we are in the midst of praising God and proclaiming God's name, Jesus invites us to come and drink.  The next part of the invitation is key, though.  Those who come to Jesus to drink will themselves become fountains of living water.

Of course, when we read this statement, we need a definition.  What are living waters?  John gives us a good answer, saying that this is the Holy Spirit.  But even then, we can have issues with understanding this because of the fact that we might not know what the Holy Spirit is.

When we think of the Spirit, we should always remember the breath of life, for spirit and breath are one and the same word in Greek and Hebrew.  And the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life.  And what is life?  Life can be anything that we make of it, but Jesus has been clear from the beginning that eternal life comes from our faith in him.  Therefore, life is following Jesus.

So, if we are coming to Jesus for a drink, should our fountain of living water look like an outpouring of judgment based on the law of Moses?  Certainly not!  As Paul has said, the law reveals death.  Jesus, on the other hand, shows us life.  Jesus, the preacher and manifestation of love, is life.  We cannot forget that fact.  Jesus is the fulfillment of everything we do.  All of our worship, all our prayers, our reading, our preaching, our listening, our learning, our understanding points to Jesus.  Everything points to God's unconditional love for us.

When we go to Jesus for a drink of water, we will begin our transformation, much like a detox diet.  We will start to drink of this life giving water which will cleanse us both inside and out.  Then, through our transformation, we will start to become a fountain of love.  We will know that we are drinking of this fountain, for that will be when we are showing our love forth throughout all of the pain and suffering that exists in the world.  As Christians, we can only claim to be followers of Jesus Christ if we are becoming fountains of Jesus' love.  Otherwise, we are just pedants, proclaiming and sealing ourselves in hatred that closes in on us until we die both in body and spirit.  We need the Holy Spirit.  We need life.  We need love. 

Day 133: Building up a Community

 "Is anyone among you suffering?  Let him pray.  Is anyone cheerful?  Let him sing psalms.  Is anyone among you sick?  Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."  James 5:13-14

I feel like this is something that we've distanced ourselves from in recent times.

We look at church like a place that exists far away from home that is only open on Sunday mornings.  It loses its spirituality over the week and becomes just a building.  We also become divorced from everybody at church once we leave on Sunday.  Yet, that's not what the point is.

When I read the above passage, I think about how important a church was to the community.  All of the activities that are listed above (and even after this passage) are things that we normally associate with church.  The thing is, though, that there isn't any fine print.  There's nothing that says, "If anyone is sick at church," or, "If anyone feels cheerful at church," or "If anyone is suffering at church."  It's plain and simple.  We are the church, and we take it everywhere we go.

The other side to consider is that we need to make sure the church is a community, not just a bank, where transactions happen between a teller and a customer.  Instead, we attend church as a community.  We should be willing to join hands in prayer and healing at any given moment.  We should feel as if the church is our second home, if not our fist.  We need to have camaraderie between all the members.  If there are issues, then we should make sure to go forward and solve them.  Rather than let evil break into our communities, dividing them and infecting every person, we should be guarding all the good that comes from our community.

Our faith is not something that we just say.  Anybody can crack open a prayer book or (in that case) look up the Creed page on Wikipedia and recite the words with no faith.  That's easy.  It's living our faith that we are called to do.  When we read the bible and learn what to do, we can build up our communities to become stronger.  It takes a great effort to build up a community, but when we do, it will benefit us, healing us, and celebrating with us.

Day 132: Direction

"Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away."  James 4:14

Right off the bat, we should remember that our lives are in God's hands.  God has the ultimate say in everything that goes on.

Imagine how great it would be if we could predict everything that would happen in the next year, next day, or even the next hour.  We would be able to plan for absolutely everything.  But, at the same time, we wouldn't have all too much to live for.  We would have all the answers, and we wouldn't have much else to do.

We live where we can't tell what's going to happen next.  So, we work on ourselves so that we can be ready for absolutely anything.  One of the greatest tenets of Jesus' preaching is, "be ready".  But that's all we can do.  It sounds pretty restrictive at the start.

Our lives our precious.  We can't control everything that affects them.  I like the metaphor of the vapor.  It's similar to smoke.  When you look at smoke, it floats in so many different directions, and I'm sure much of that depends on how the molecules of air are moving in around that smoke.  Then, there are also basic traits of heat, such as the circular motion that comes from the source.  Eventually, no matter which way the smoke goes, it dissipates as it reaches higher and higher.  We cannot grab smoke and manipulate it.  All we can do is prepare everything from the source and hope that things go in the direction that we want it.

Right now, our lives are going.  They are going in so many different directions.  You might get a call for a new job offer.  You may receive a message about the death of a relative or a friend.  You might get hungry.  You might do nothing.  The only thing we can do is prepare ourselves.  The way we prepare ourselves for the future involves realizing where we want to be.  This will involve prayer and meditation.  This will also involve lots of study and practice.  If we don't prepare, things will only go in different directions, whether we like them or not.  We can't complain if they don't go in the way we want them to go.  At the same time, we cannot say that everything will go according to plan.  We just need to remember that our lives are in God's hands.  God is working in our lives.

Day 129: Unwavering Faith

"But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind."  James 1:6

This is one of my all time favorite verses.  It taught me so much about faith when I first read it, and each time that I come across it, it bears the same weight on my life.

As Christians, we have to live our lives faithfully, and one of the ways to do that is to do everything out of faith.  We should be able to point all of our actions back to our faith in the one God.  Our love should come from our faith.  Our practice should come from our faith.  Our hospitality should come from our faith.  Our faith is the root to everything that we do.  If we do not have faith, we don't have anything.

Imagine if you asked a close friend or your partner to do something.  You ask simply because you expect/know that it will be done.  You have forged a relationship with this person because of the amount of trust that you have put into this person and because you know that there will be support coming from this person.

When I think about this, I immediately wonder why I would ever cast any doubt upon God.  I mean, why would I pray if I don't even have a reason to pray?  Why would I get all worked up, kneeling on the ground, reaching up with my hands, shouting before God if I am not expecting for my prayer to get answered?  That sounds like an awful lot of effort for something that doesn't matter.  Even worse, why would I place so much doubt upon the being who has guided me and saved me and transformed me in so many different ways?

God should have all of my trust.  I shouldn't have to wander away from time to time just out of curiosity or doubt.  That makes absolutely no sense.  If I do all of that, I become as a wave.  I cycle above and below the water, and I only live as long as I don't bump against a rock or any other body floating on the sea.  That's not a very good lifestyle for me to adopt.  Instead, I should be prepared to communicate with God.  More importantly, I should be prepared to encounter God, even when it might be a shock to me.

Communication with God is difficult because God is not like every other human being on the earth.  God is God.  Therefore, we need to prepare ourselves to talk to God.  It's not that God isn't going to listen, but it's that we are going to lose sense of God when we go unprepared.  There are some easier preparations, such as by attending church or reading the bible.  But the real test comes when you approach prayer.  Is your mind ready to speak to God?  Are your hands ready to reach for God's hands?  Are your ears ready to hear what God has to say?  It's only when we are prepared to communicate with God in faith that we will have a rewarding conversation.

Day 103: Hear Him

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud.  And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son.  Hear Him!"  Luke 9:34-35

I find the Transfiguration to be something very confusing.  The description we get in the Gospels doesn't seem to warrant so much to make an important feast day out of it in the church calendar.  Perhaps, when I compare it to the Passion, the Nativity, or the end times, this description pales in comparison.

However, every time I come back to reading about it, I feel that God speaks to me in a different way.  A detail that stuck out to me this time around was the passage I copied above.  The disciples whom Jesus had brought along for this event were filled with so many questions, as can be evidenced by Peter's suggestion to build tabernacles for the three men.  In addition to that, they were frightened.  Their teacher's face had just started glowing!

Despite all this uncertainty, though, they entered the cloud.  And, as they entered, they began to receive the gift of understanding.  Jesus is one with God.  In the same way, we should take this approach to our own lives.  We will encounter so many different things where we won't know all the answers.  However, when we take the leap forward, even with our doubts, our questions, our fears, we will get the answer.  God is wherever we are, but we need to receive God.  I find that the physical church building can be seen as a sort of parallel to the cloud.  Within the church's walls, we hear the voice of God in the form of song, prayer, and scripture.  We can also look at our own moments of deep meditation as entering the cloud - the cloud of our own souls.  Within our meditations, we can hear the voice of God.  Another parallel of the cloud is the bible.  When we open up the covers, we can start to receive the revelation of God.  And, each time that we receive the revelations, we understand the same message:  "Jesus is my beloved son.  Hear him!"

Day 074: Let God Live in You

"He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.  You are therefore greatly mistaken."  Mark 12:27

This is an admonishment that Jesus tells us every day.

It seems to be the answer to many people's questions about declining church attendance.  We have let God become the God of those who have died way in the past, people we don't even know personally.  We allow ourselves to be absorbed in motions and customs that we don't even believe in.  Why do we do this?

Perhaps we do this because of the fact that we are afraid of God: not with a godly fear, one that brings us closer to God, but a phobia, one that just forces us to run away from God.  We're afraid to explore our relationship with God, so we let those who have dared to draw closer to God guide us with their mere words.  However, I don't think that that's what those saints before us would have wanted.

What happens to you when you see something amazing?  When you go to a breathtaking beach for the first time, or climb up the top of the Great Wall of China?  You take pictures, you make your personal mark, and you tell every single person around you.  In the same way, those who have experienced God in so many ways have given us their postcards, their accounts, their videos, their selfies.  When we show off our pictures and talk about our experiences, we almost always conclude with the same recommendation, "you have to go do this."  And that's what the saints of the past are telling us, living in their words and their histories.

Sometimes, though, when we walk into church, pick up a prayer book, mouth the songs, or watch the priest do her thing, we are just there.  Imagine going to a foreign country for the first time and just walking around everywhere without taking a moment to breathe the new air, look at the new sights, or even taste the food.  You just wasted a trip.  In the same way, by not engaging in church, you're just wasting your time.  You are allowing God to be the God of the dead.

It will definitely take some effort, but a long line of saints will tell you that the results are worth the effort.  Raise your hands, think about the prayers, sing your best, just do something when you are in a spiritual space.  Allow for the Holy Spirit to enter you.  The only way you will truly reach God is by reaching out towards God, just as God is reaching out to you.

This Lent, take a moment to think about the different prayers you say in church, or think about your favorite hymn/worship song.  Think about how all the words can become part of your everyday life.

Day 067: Discipline

So He said to them, "This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting."       Mark 9:29

This is a recurring theme from Jesus, and it emphasizes the importance of prayer and fasting in our life in faith.

Ever since I heard my Abuelito talk about the teacher-student relationship between Jesus and his disciples, I have read the Gospels with attention towards such a relationship.  When I read this, I thought about how Jesus must have felt after seeing his disciples asking him why they couldn't cast out a demon.  Jesus seems to respond in a way that a teacher would (and most definitely should): they were not doing what he had taught them.

The disciples were students of living a spiritual life, above all else.  When I think of that, I begin to think about how Jesus' statement can apply to other aspects of my life.  Prayer and fasting are foundations to living faithfully, but they are also disciplines (things disciples should teach and follow).  When I think of it that way, I think about the other images from this passage.  The demon in the story is every doubt that we have in our own lives.  The demon doesn't have to be something that possesses us in the way the bible shows, but demons loom all about us, and many times we fall slaves to them.  Self-doubt is a demon that I have to face quite regularly, especially as a musician.  It doesn't only manifest itself in me as doubt, but it also overtakes me in every aspect of my life.  My practicing becomes vain.  My lessons become hopeless.  I lose all confidence, even downplaying my own talents before every person that I meet.  It's a show of helplessness.

Prayer and fasting, discipline, are what will cast out demons from all around us.  We need to become better disciplined in whatever we pursue.  If it's weight loss, we have to keep up with our dieting and exercising.  If it is an art, it is practice and dedication.  If it is a relationship, it is communication and faith.  We are called to become more disciplined in our lives so that we can take control.

This Lent, take some time to turn your life into one where you can have confidence in yourself.  Pray for guidance from God so that God can help you cast out all the demons that plague your life. 

Day 047: Spiritual Wisdom

"Let no one deceive himself.  If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.  For it is written 'He catches the wise in their own craftiness'."                          1 Corinthians 3:18-19

How can this be?  Don't we want to have the best thinkers in the Church?

That's kind of my first reaction to this advice and to the quoted text.  We have enough trouble these days with people misleading masses of people because of their lack of discernment and knowledge and wisdom.  At the same time, some of the theologians that I respect the most, from ancient to modern times, were wise in both Scripture and philosophy.

However, the beginning of this advice gives the whole message away.  One can consider himself to be wise if he truly wants to.  Eventually, there will be someone out there who will believe him.  In the same way, it shows that there are so many wise people out there today who constantly take steps deeper and deeper into admitting their ignorance before God.  They allow themselves to become empty vessels, blank canvases, so that they may receive more and more revelations of God. 

Throughout the history of our spiritual tradition, God became known through revelations over time.  In the bible, we have many examples of people receiving the revelations, but we probably have just as many of people refusing them.  Of course, the stories of those who received the revelations end well, and those of those who refused the revelations end terribly.

How, then, do we make ourselves fools before God?  The first thing is to understand that we will never know more than the all-knowing and omnipresent God.  The next step is to let God take care of us.  We should start to listen to God for guidance in all of our questions.  Obviously, the only way we can accept a revelation is by opening our eyes.  As Job said, "But now, my eyes see you," when he received an astonishing revelation of God, so should we as we receive revelations from God each day.

We can open up our spiritual eyes by coming into communication with God.  When we read the bible, we can start to understand more about who God is.  When we pray, we have a conversation with God, where we can hear the answers to our questions.