When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.
~ His Holiness The Dalai Lama
The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about Him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me and you will not find Me. Where I am you cannot come.” The Jews said to one another, “Where does this Man intend to go that we will not find Mim? Does He intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does He mean by saying, ‘You will seek Me and you will not find Me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?” On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in John 7
Oh beloved, it is true. Apart from Him we can do nothing. And this, if we have received any wisdom, know all too well. But the problem is worse than simply being able to do nothing. The inability to make any progress puts us into a panic.
And this is the problem of the West right now.
As our courage (read: hearts full of something) has waned, we have lost our momentum altogether. And as we have come to a stop, we can feel the whole thing beginning to slide backwards into an abyss. There is nothing we can do, so the infighting has begun.
There is nothing flowing from the hearts of the people to fix the very real problems in our world. Color and religion and politics and economics and entertainment and social thinking have always been items over which we would, should and could disagree.
However, much of this was done under the impetus of some sort of Transcendent Truth from Whom and by Whom we lived and moved and had our being. As exceedingly messed up as we have always been, courage drove us forward – and through/over the rough patches and deep fissures of our society.
But somewhere, we quit believing in Him. Somewhere we decided that our own little homebrew of ‘spirituality’ was going to be enough to get us through whatever. And instead of living on eternal (read: unlimited, unchanging and unending) Truth, we built our own little cracked cisterns of factoids and data.
We tried, but our code was buggy. We tried to make it loop and amplify, but it always crashed. And, just like a hardware manufacturer trying to blame the software or firmware guys (and they telling the hardware guy it is his fault) – we have gone into some sort of “blameware” brawl with each other. Each party sees the fault in the other, but cannot see their own. And even if they could, they don’t have enough ability to fix the problem on their own.
Can we see it? This is why we are where we are today. Our hearts are empty. We are panicked. And as our final attempts at stopping the wreck of the West are failing, we are beginning to lash out at each other to grab any of the last bits of goodness that some “other” person or group might have. We have positioned ourselves as victims of everyone else, in the hope that we might gain something.
However, the problem is that nobody really has anything of value to give – so everyone is just creating their own little foxholes from which to launch raiding parties to gather spoiling spoil from some other group.
Its not working.
There is a Solution though. And it is as hard to embrace as is recognizing our problem. We have to stop trying to get something from somebody else. Then, we have to abandon the process of blaming anyone else, but our own selves. Then, the kicker, we need to give up altogether…. He is waiting for us in that place.
He is waiting with everything we need.
All the Truth
All the Life
All the Hope
All the Strength
All the Purpose
All the Good
All the Justice
All the Mercy
All the Grace.
So, are you struggling with feeling like a victim? You may indeed be one, but your offender has nothing to offer you. There is, however, One who has plenty for the both of you. Look away from the offender dear one. Look to Him. Let Him fill you and heal you… Then, pour the burning coals of blessing back out onto your offender’s head that he too might be warned and warmed and healed.
Tonight is your night. Time to live courageously.
