S
springbreeze
Guest
Dear friends
A meditation by Tony Campolo from ‘A Sermon at Greenbelt’
The Listening God
You need to pray in stillness and in quietude. People say they go out and look at the stars on the hillside. Jesus says don’t do it: go into the closet, shut the door. I find I have to be in darkness really to pray. In stillness and quietude I focus on Jesus. I don’t say anything. Mother Teresa was once asked : ‘When you pray, what do you say to God?’ She said: ‘I don’t say anything. I listen’ So the interviewer said: ‘Alright. What does God say to you?’ She said: ‘God doesn’t say anything. God listens.’ And then she added: 'If you can’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you’
The deepest kind of prayers are not when we tell God the things God already knows. It’s when we become still, focused, centered down, in quietude. I have to say the name ‘Jesus’ over and over again to drive away the hundred and one things that are waiting to be done that absorb my consciousness. And in the stillness, I allow Jesus to invade me, to possess me, the same Jesus who died on the Cross, the same Jesus who was resurrected. Because the Kingdom of God starts that way. It starts with a people who in stillness and in quietude surrender to a presence, and become a new people.
When the Spirit of Christ invades you, you are capable of finding Jesus in people that you meet - especially in the poor and oppressed. The Kingdom of God: a society in which people are transformed, in order that through them God might eliminate hunger, oppression, disease, transform the world that is into the Kingdom of God.
God Bless you and much love and peace to you
Teresa
A meditation by Tony Campolo from ‘A Sermon at Greenbelt’
The Listening God
You need to pray in stillness and in quietude. People say they go out and look at the stars on the hillside. Jesus says don’t do it: go into the closet, shut the door. I find I have to be in darkness really to pray. In stillness and quietude I focus on Jesus. I don’t say anything. Mother Teresa was once asked : ‘When you pray, what do you say to God?’ She said: ‘I don’t say anything. I listen’ So the interviewer said: ‘Alright. What does God say to you?’ She said: ‘God doesn’t say anything. God listens.’ And then she added: 'If you can’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you’
The deepest kind of prayers are not when we tell God the things God already knows. It’s when we become still, focused, centered down, in quietude. I have to say the name ‘Jesus’ over and over again to drive away the hundred and one things that are waiting to be done that absorb my consciousness. And in the stillness, I allow Jesus to invade me, to possess me, the same Jesus who died on the Cross, the same Jesus who was resurrected. Because the Kingdom of God starts that way. It starts with a people who in stillness and in quietude surrender to a presence, and become a new people.
When the Spirit of Christ invades you, you are capable of finding Jesus in people that you meet - especially in the poor and oppressed. The Kingdom of God: a society in which people are transformed, in order that through them God might eliminate hunger, oppression, disease, transform the world that is into the Kingdom of God.
God Bless you and much love and peace to you
Teresa
I know Dave, I’m starting to worry myself!!
So many times we put our own “human limitations mentality” on God, thinking he is just as limited and are convinced we have to spell out for God what is happening in our lives as if God doesn’t already know it… lol