Tag: Garden of Eden

• James 1:19-21: Our Salvation Garden

  
  

  James 1:19-21: Our Salvation Garden

  Friday, November 4, 2022

  Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

  How do we best lead with our ears? From what source does God’s righteousness flow? When might the Word landscape our lives?

  God says: There are too many words in your lives. Rather than shout and rant at one another, watch and listen. Rather than criticize and complain, praise and celebrate whenever possible. My righteousness flows from my love and ebbs toward you in direct proportion to the amount of openness you show to my creation. The Garden of Eden is not a mystical place that exists in the misty past or the hazy future. My garden of paradise grows in your hearts. Allow me to prune the fruit trees and vines that they might bear more fruit. Permit me to send gentle rain, heavy torrents, beating sun and watch as I draw something beautiful from both the driest landscape and the densest jungle. Nothing can stifle the love I want to share with each and all of you. Come, put aside your pride, bring your humble heart to me. Work with me in my burgeoning garden of salvation.

  God speaks to us constantly. We hear the Word best when we practice leading with our ears. We live God’s righteous love when we put our anger behind us and take on God’s humility. We create salvation gardens with God when we allow the Word to govern all that we say and do.

  Enter the word righteous or humility in the blog search bar and explore other posts that open this concept for us.

  Click on the garden images on this post to read more on James 1 and the concept of a salvation garden, or visit: http://www.flowingfaith.com/2011/07/making-a-salvation-garden-of-your-life.html  or http://limitlesslaura.com/cultivating-your-inner-garden-a-course-in-happiness/  

  

  Read about the blooming malva flowers in the arid Atacama desert in South America after rain at The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/10/29/the-driest-place-on-earth-is-covered-in-pink-flowers-after-a-crazy-year-of-rain/

  Images from: http://www.flowingfaith.com/2011/07/making-a-salvation-garden-of-your-life.html and https://www.pinterest.com/pin/406168460119827057/

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  November 4, 2022

  Garden of Eden, God’s love, humility, righteousness

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• Genesis 1:27-28: Dominion

  
  

  Genesis 1:27-28: Dominion

  

  Friday, March 4, 2022

  God created humans in God’ image; male and female God created them. God blessed them saying, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it”.

  On this first Friday in Lent, we contemplate the abundant gifts and mysteries of our planet. We ask for wisdom to use Mother Earth’s resources prudently. Today as we reflect we might read about or watch part of a Frontline episode and determine how we can improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay or the world’s rain forests.

  When Jesus stills a sudden storm, his followers ask in amazement, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” Read this story in Matthew 8:23-27 or in Luke 8:22-25 and consider our complex relationship with the natural world and how we characterize our human dominion over earth’s resources.

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  Read or watch one the Frontline episodes Carbon Watch or Poisoned Waters at: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/carbonwatch/moneytree/ or http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poisonedwaters/view/

  Image from: http://www.oceansbridge.com/oil-paintings/product/74478/thegardenofedeninthebackgroundthetemptation

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  March 4, 2022

  Chesapeake Bay, Frontline, Garden of Eden, Luke 8:22-25, Matthew 8:23-27, rain forests

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• 1 Corinthians 10:14-22: Rejecting Idols

  
  

  Wednesday, April 22, 2020

  1 Corinthians 10:14-22

  The Importance of Meekness . . . Rejecting Idols

  Paul warns that small, easy temptations lead to a great, cataclysmic fall.  What begins at first quietly and even innocently, will later lead to ruin.  We can never hear this lesson too much.

  What helps us to maintain the meekness of Christ that we work so much to find and maintain?  It is the Eucharist of thanksgiving in the living Christ that is the antidote against the temptation to serve our personal idols.  It is this gift of self from Christ that redeems and transforms us.  We become too full of ourselves when we believe that we do not need Christ’s protection as we move through our days.  We lose our humility in God when we believe that we can handle our personal obstacles alone.  Pride is perhaps the first sign to ourselves that we are beginning to tread in dangerous territory.

  From today’s MAGNIFICAT Mini-Reflection (335).  Pride sets subtle snares.  Whenever we imagine that we are in control of life – our own or someone else’s – we have fallen prey to the ancient whisper in the Garden: “You shall be like gods”.  Mortality is the enduring reminder that we become like God not by our own power but by the power of the cross. 

  From Sirach 10 in the Morning Prayer and intercessions today: Odious to the Lord and to men is arrogance, and the sin of oppression they both hate.  The beginning of pride is man’s stubbornness in withdrawing his heart from his Maker; for pride is the reservoir of sin, a source which runs over with vice.  The roots of the proud God plucks up, to plant the humble in their place: he breaks down their stem to the level of the ground, then digs their roots from the earth. 

  This from Matthew 23:12: Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; whoever humbles himself will be exalted. 

  Temptations come to us on little cat feet, becoming part of our daily self and routine without our noticing, disassembling our humble relationship with God.  St. Paul warns his listeners that the first little steps into our addictions are the beginning of idolatry.  Whatever we do to excess that excludes God from our living and from our decision-making . . . these minuscule openings into idolatry must be investigated and put away.  These little wooings, these seemingly insignificant acts that we believe have no effect upon us are . . . after all is considered . . . our first steps away from God, away from the Garden . . . and into the arms of one who delights in our fall.

  Humility keeps us close by the creator. Meekness reminds us to reject our idols. Quiet obedience in the Spirit brings us home to Christ. Today we spend time reflecting on our meekness . . . and how this gift of discipleship binds us forever to God.

  Tomorrow, discipleship and the gift of broken-heartedness . . .

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  Image from: http://www.understandfasting.com/the-answer-to-pride/

  Cameron, Peter John. “Prayer for the Morning.” MAGNIFICAT. 2.24 (2011): 335. Print. 

  First written on February 24, 2011.  Revised and posted today as a Favorite. 

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  April 22, 2020

  discipleship, Garden of Eden, humility, meekness, pride, Sirach 10, temptation

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