Matthew under the arm 34
Columba was very tired yesterday. Why? Well, he didn't realise but I had watched him get out of his sleeping bag in the middle of the night and stand by the door of our bunk house and look out on the darkness. He was whispering as if in conversation. I was desperate to know what he was whispering? I could make out questions that sarted with 'Why?' or 'How?'.... So no wonder he was tired. His prayer was a question session with God. As we sat by the fountain today at the end of our day's walk, he was enjoying a tomato. Slowly four or five folk from the town came and sat with us, intrigued to know who we were. Before long, Columba was asking them questions about themselves, what was important to them, what was difficult for them. By placing himself 'at their feet', he had, like Christ, reshaped authority.
Matthew 9:1-8….
Christ knew what was going on in the hearts of the ‘scribes’. They wanted to be forgiven but because of their ‘position’, they felt only threat. Too much 'face' would be lost. Christ sees the ‘fault-line’ through all of human personality. In this story a paralytic who is in desperate straights, has little, if anything, to hide. The ‘fault-line’ is obvious because truth is obvious in the sick. Christ’s authority to forgive and heal, comes from the diseased through the poverty of their circumstances, because Christ is that poverty. Those who are not aware have not the poverty to face their desire for forgiveness. They do not (we do not?) allow Christ in. To ask you to forgive me, I have to give away so much power and what I call self-respect.
I would have Your gifts of forgiveness and healing through Your Christ arising within me
Imagine yourself carried in front of Christ. Who is carrying you? Which of your friends would do that for you? See them. Let them love you. Imagine Christ meeting with you intimately; looking at you and wanting to meet you in your sense of loss and pain, which tells him something of the real you. There is a poverty in your circumstances, no matter how rich you may be in some of your circumstances. Christ is not just near you, but within you. He is rising with your feelings and transforming them. With the sentence, give your prayer time for this to happen.
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
Matthew 9:1-8….
Christ knew what was going on in the hearts of the ‘scribes’. They wanted to be forgiven but because of their ‘position’, they felt only threat. Too much 'face' would be lost. Christ sees the ‘fault-line’ through all of human personality. In this story a paralytic who is in desperate straights, has little, if anything, to hide. The ‘fault-line’ is obvious because truth is obvious in the sick. Christ’s authority to forgive and heal, comes from the diseased through the poverty of their circumstances, because Christ is that poverty. Those who are not aware have not the poverty to face their desire for forgiveness. They do not (we do not?) allow Christ in. To ask you to forgive me, I have to give away so much power and what I call self-respect.
I would have Your gifts of forgiveness and healing through Your Christ arising within me
Imagine yourself carried in front of Christ. Who is carrying you? Which of your friends would do that for you? See them. Let them love you. Imagine Christ meeting with you intimately; looking at you and wanting to meet you in your sense of loss and pain, which tells him something of the real you. There is a poverty in your circumstances, no matter how rich you may be in some of your circumstances. Christ is not just near you, but within you. He is rising with your feelings and transforming them. With the sentence, give your prayer time for this to happen.
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
posted by Martin at 2:50 pm
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