Meditate | The Time of Conflict

“The time of conflict is when the Lord is at work (for which reason the prophets call a regenerate person the work of God’s fingers [Psalms 8:3, 6; Isaiah 19:25; 29:23; 45:11; 60:21; 64:8; Lamentations 4:2]), and he does not rest until love takes the lead. Then the conflict ends.

When the work progresses so far that faith is united with love, it is called very good, since the Lord now makes us likenesses of himself” (Secrets of Heaven 63).

For some reason (and I’d be curious to know if it’s the same for others), I often fear that love will never return, that I’ll stop loving the people and things in my life and it will never come back. This is how it feels for me in conflict (internal or spiritual conflict). Conflict is one of the most uncomfortable states to be in; I feel totally alone, stuck, helpless, and hopeless. This passage is extraordinarily comforting for how it assures us that those times of conflict are when the Lord is at work and does not rest until love takes the lead. This is a passage much worth repeating throughout my day as a reminder for how I can trust that the Lord actually is leading me to more genuine love even when I am undergoing conflict.  

Can She Still Be With Me?

Having had a child after her mother passed away, Abby writes about her struggle to comprehend how connected she and her mother are now and how this may change after her own death. She draws heavily on one of her husband's theological papers which leaves her central question unresolved. Ultimately, though grieving the loss of her mother, she is confident that the Lord is in charge. -Editor

Author's Note

For the last several months I’ve had the idea to write this article about the interaction between people here on earth and their loved ones who have died. Parts of it keep rolling around in my head, but every time I come back to trying to write it I can’t capture really what I am trying to say. A year ago my husband wrote a paper about whether or not people recognize each other after death for one of his theological school classes. This paper says a lot of the things that I have been wanting to say. So I thought that rather than essentially plagiarizing his paper I would just include chunks of it with my thoughts interspersed. The sections from Malcolm's paper are in block quotes, and the long quotes within the quotes from the paper are in italics. If you'd like to read the whole thing, here it is: “Why People Do or Do Not Recognize Each Other After Death” (PDF).

Can She Still Be With Me?

Just over two years ago my Mom died. She had cancer and had been sick for many years, so in a lot of ways it was a relief when she died. But that doesn’t change the fact that I miss her.

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Meditate | Water from the Sanctuary

"'Beside the river, on its bank, on this side and that, grows every food tree. Its leaf will not fall, and its fruit will not be used up. Month by month it is reborn, because its waters are going out from the sanctuary. And its fruit will serve as food, and its leaf, as medicine' (Ezekiel 47:12).

'Water from the sanctuary' symbolizes the living energy and mercy of the Lord, who is the 'sanctuary.'" Secrets of Heaven 57

I love the image of being a tree planted on the bank of the Lord’s river of life. It says the Lord is the sanctuary, which I’m guessing is the origin of the river, and so the river of life emanates from the Lord and creates all things, including each one of us. I could see the tree as an image of the Lord giving food to people—heavenly people, or the tree could be a symbol for a person, which is a more striking image to me in this moment. The message I get from this passage is about being reborn every month, or every cycle (see my earlier meditation on cycles), and how it’s by having our roots drawing nourishment from the Lord that there is a new dawn, a new beginning at each turn of the cycle. When I go through hard or dark times, through temptation, it’s my own selfishness that’s getting thrown in my face. It definitely has been true in my experience that the quality of the Lord that really saves me and brings me through the cycle is mercy—forgiveness. Likewise, our ideas, preconceptions, and understanding of other people can be reborn through mercy—which is a living energy, a life-giving energy from the Lord, the sanctuary. We can give others new life in our own minds by seeing them from a place of mercy and forgiveness; it is at this point that our fruit can be food and our leaves medicine for them.    

The Atheist Perspective

Owen contemplates atheistic beliefs in light of arguments presented by the New Church about the ultimate fate of those who carry such beliefs. He posits that belief and its consequences are at the center of our life on earth and that to suggest otherwise is to ignore or obfuscate the truth as he sees it. -Editor

You might wonder what atheists have to do with the New Church. Also, you might not wonder that. I don’t know that I really even believed in atheists until one of my old school friends and then brother became one.

If you’re like I was back in the old days, you might just write atheists off as misled and/or confused and/or wronged in some way by the church and so turned against it. I think, honestly, that all that atheists are, are people who have chosen to not believe in God. Of course there are psychological reasons behind their choice, but there are psychological reasons behind every choice every person makes.

The truth is some people just choose to not believe the same things we believe and it’s very possible those choices will lead them down a terrible road.

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Meditate | Building Houses; Walking on Water

“The role of the intellect is to hear the Word, while the role of the will is to do it…‘Everyone who hears my words and does them I compare to a prudent man who built his house on rock. But everyone who hears my words and does not do them I compare to a stupid man who built his house on sand’ (Matthew 7: 24, 26)” (Secrets of Heaven 44).

Prudent = rock; stupid = sand. Prudent = hears Word and does it; stupid = hears Word and doesn’t do it. Rock and sand are made of the same thing, but rock is stuck together. Rock is held together while sand is all broken up into tiny particles. So to live what the Lord teaches is the glue that makes the truths we know a true foundation. This is such a perfect symbol but I never thought very deeply about it before. It doesn’t matter how much you know—how much sand you have—it won’t do you any good as support you can live on unless it becomes glued together through living what you know is true.

This meditation of mine happens to go very well with an idea presented in yesterday’s adult Cathedral service. There, Rev. Grant Odhner gave a sermon about the story of the Lord and Peter walking on water.

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To Buy or not to Buy

If thinking is something you like to do, read on. Garth Brown argues that our modes of consumption and production present “the great moral problem of our time.” As I finish mindlessly stuffing another piece of Halloween candy into my mouth, I greatly appreciate this call to consider. Do we live purposefully? Do we make our choices with real usefulness in mind? -Editor

We should all provide our bodies with food. This has to come first, but the goal is to have a sound mind in a sound body. We also ought to provide our mind with its food, that is, things that build intelligence and judgment; but the goal is to be in a state in which we can serve our fellow citizens, our community, our country, the church, and therefore the Lord. (True Christianity 406)

Consumption is the great moral problem of our time. I say this not because it is the most obviously evil, but because it is the most opaque. History texts claim, or they did when I was in eighth grade, that industrialization standardized both the process of production and the product itself, and that this so increased efficiency that it led to more; more was produced more cheaply, and more people made enough money to buy more. I don't doubt the truth of this narrative, but it does not examine how, by moving labor and production from small shops to factories, from communities to industrial districts, it obscured the material and human conditions requisite to making a given product. And in the years since the continuation and acceleration of this trend have rendered production so complex, distant, and hidden that we are now unlikely to know in any real sense where a single thing we own came from.

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