Posts Tagged ‘Epistle of James’
Attention
Attention!
In the past two years especially, I have lost my attention to detail. I miss dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s” at work, I missed renewing my car license till reminded yesterday evening by a police officer with a ticket. I cannot find the duplicate birth certificate I received five years ago when I renewed my drivers’ license, etc., etc. In my early life, I greatly valued detail: my checkbook was always balanced, my bills paid ahead; I made much less money but had more freedom than I seem to have now.
I was stopped re: the lapsed car license on my way to Centering Prayer. Last week, I had a heart to heart with my boss about “i’s” and “t’s.” As I prayed, waiting on God and His Spirit for illumination, intentionally opening myself up to Her, what I heard was my need to pay attention. Yes, I need to get my house in order re: rendering documentation and payment to Caesar (for example) as well as keeping up the books on my dogs, home, and work. I need to develop a very functional filing system and no, the computer can’t do it all – or, I can’t do it properly on the computer. As I listened to God, I heard “pay attention” in the living of my entire life, not just bits to satisfy others or the state.
Pay attention to
- why I am not attending Sunday morning church services
- why I delay and put off even paperwork and mailings which benefit me
- why I act as though I am above “paying attention.”
James 2:14-26 (NRSV)
14 “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe-and shudder. 20 Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? 21 Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. 23 Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.”
We, er, I, am not to pray and wait; I am to pray and act – not as the world would, rushing to and fro without time for God and our fellows, human and beast – but we are to act out of our faith, working it true as an homage to God, not as a burden born. Ours is a LIVING faith, not a dead one; ours is meetings of like-minded people, sharing our love with those who know not this love of God; and that, my friends, takes movement, it takes meeting people where they are and it takes paperwork with record-keeping (my downfall).
Related articles
- 7 days without exercise makes 1 weak (thedisconsolategarden.wordpress.com)
- Collaborative Learning, or, Attention Blindness
