Nothing that is a person’s very own has any life in it. When presented to view, it looks hard as bone, and black. Everything that comes from the Lord, on the other hand, has life. It has a spiritual and heavenly quality and looks like something living and human.
Incredibly, perhaps (although it is absolutely true), each word, each mental image, and each scintilla of thought in an angelic spirit is alive. Passion received from the Lord, who is life itself, permeates every single thing about such a spirit. Secrets of Heaven 41
The Lord is life itself. This amazes me. Life is something we receive from the Lord. It is so easy for me to get more focused on the concept of “having.” I have life. I have love. I have passion. But all these things we receive from the Lord. My concept of reception has been shifting. It is now a much more dynamic, moment-to-moment, real time experience of receiving things (like passion and life and good and true thoughts) from the Lord. Recognizing that, that it’s a constant flow is hard for my small, limited mind to handle sometimes, but it excites my spirit.
Also this passage changed my ideas about what is our “very own.” I often in the past have equated what is our “very own” with what is physical. The physical parts of me are inherently lifeless and it is only through the Lord’s influx that I get to be alive. But really it is deeper than that! The Lord is life itself, and so everything good and true is living—said to be alive, even “every scintilla of thought of an angelic spirit.” I’ve been under the misconception of the overly general idea that everything “spiritual” is alive, but everything “physical” is dead or inherently lifeless. But what about evil desires and false thoughts? What about hell? These are certainly not physical things, even though they act on us physical-spiritual beings. They are spiritual realities but they are certainly not in the category of things good and true. So the spiritual world is not all living? It is comprised of living things and things that are not living? So evil spirits are not living but they exist? That is an amazing mercy of the Lord. I would imagine this is because even evil spirits retain that faint glow of life from the Lord that gives them freedom and rationality.
Well, I don’t have a full understanding of the spiritual world. I’ve had a limited understanding of it and still do, but it’s nice to think that my understanding is shifting. The more I read the more I become aware of how immense and amazing the Lord’s mercy is. Even though this passage makes me think about the complexity of the spiritual world, it ultimately is a reflection of who the Lord is, and I love learning more about the Lord.