Monday, October 4, 2010

Daily Office Reflection: Self-Care

Psalms 106 1-18 * 106:19-48; Hosea 14:1-9; Acts 22:30-23:11; Luke 6:39-49

Jesus just dumps metaphor upon metaphor on us today: blind stumbling along behind blind; specks and logs in eyes; good and unhealthy trees and their respective fruits (or lack thereof). And he throws in an example of the person who "gets" his message, imaging a person who builds a home on good and deep foundations, as opposed to the person who does not listen whose house falls over in the floods because of inappropriate footings.

Jesus is driving us to understand that we need to start somewhere personal, deep within us, in order to "get" his message, his teachings, his lessons. We need to be able to care for ourselves and understand our own short-comings, and work on those before we can reach out and say to others: do this! This does not mean we need to be perfect and solve and completely annihilate all of our faults. We need to be able to understand them though, and be able to not let those weaknesses be empowered to instruct how we act.

One of the ways Jesus models for us to help us do this digging (not so much today, but in other areas recently read in Luke), is that Jesus goes for quiet time, he does things that help refresh his spirit, he prays, he opens himself to God's Spirit, and he uses the gifts God imbued into his being. Take a walk today, pray. Take 45 minutes or an hour and delve into that favorite hobby that sits packed away in a closet or dumped in a corner: play the guitar, paint, sew, knit, crochet, exercise, write. Do something that helps center you, so that you can set fresh eyes on yourself, understand yourself so that care for others is based on Jesus' precepts and not our misconceptions.
jfd+

Copyright 2010, The Rev. John F. Dwyer. All Rights Reserved.

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