NSoC 6: Pray for Your Own Discovery

See Notes on this series...
The paradox of "salvation" is explored by Merton at the beginning of this chapter. To be "saved" is to be lost in God, or to be found nowhere but in him. Merton bemoans the banal concept of salvation of those who reduce it to mere "ethical propriety." Merton feels that salvation properly reflects God's great concern and care for man, not just his physical actions but his whole being. Salvation is a rescue from the both the external world and the internal ego, from forces in the range of trivial to sordid. To be "lost" is to remain in that vaporous ego.

To find God (or more rightly, to be found by him) means more than just leaving behind the things of this world that are not God. Merton declares that I can empty myself of everything that is not God and still not find him. He must call out to me, else I remain like a rock, oblivious to the ground on which it lies.

God has to come to me, Merton says, because I cannot go to him. I don't know the way nor what I'd be looking for. Merton says we reach the reality of our true self and become contemplatives "when God discovers Himself in us." He explains that God knows himself in all his creation, of course, but that not all his creation knows or is even aware of him. Until he calls us and fills our emptiness with himself by "supernatural missions of His own life," we still dwell in our false self. Once we receive him, his word, and his spirit, then "my identity begins" and he lives within us, both as creator and our true self, as Merton interprets Galatians 2.20 ("I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.")

Merton explains that this new life doesn't become practical to us until we choose God's will to become his instruments of love and mercy over service to our false self and its desires. But even as God awakens us, reveals us as sons (and daughters) and heirs, we remain earth-bound and our best efforts at pleasing him are tainted because of the selfishness we were born into.

One indication, Merton notes, that I have found him (or he has found me) is my level of interest in him or my desire for his presence. If my soul is his but my mind isn't, am I really his? If I am his only through formal prayer, am I really his?

Merton then launches into a beautiful prayer, praying not for mere justification but for a fire in the soul. He prays for strength to give God glory in all things. He prays for God to "keep him" from various sins and impurities. He prays for freedom from sloth, laziness, and cowardice. He asks for strength, humility, rest, presence. Again, a beautiful prayer.

He closes the chapter by enumerating some characteristics of seeking God perfectly. These range from shunning worldly anxieties, a renewed mind, silence, waiting, love of others, turning from spurious judgments, criticisms, and opinions, concentration, faith and trust. "It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord." Lamentations 3.26

Quaff:
I was reminded of an old saw about heaven and hell: Heaven is me saying to God, "Your will be done." Hell is God saying to me, "Your will be done."

My mind again turns to the greatest commandment: "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12.28-34) Awakening to God's love for me and reciprocating that love among my neighbors, the will of God.

Quibble:
There are pockets of evangelicals by whom salvation is defined simply as "I'm heaven bound." Listen to some southern gospel music if you don't believe me: "One of these days by and by I'm gonna get my wings and fly outta here and float on a cloud with Jesus and leave this cruel world behind!" That's a happy thought, but it doesn't help much when your child has a temperature of 102 or your neighbor backs over your fence and doesn't want to fix it or a coworker's child is killed by a drunk driver. How do I live today? How does salvation affect me today? What does it mean to search for my true identity today? Where do I find the strength to keep searching in spite of my sin and imperfection today?

Query:

• Do I love God with all my heart, when I'm afraid of ______ or anxious about _____ or distracted by _____?
• Do I love God with all my soul, when my appetite longs for _____?
• Do I love God with all my mind, when my thoughts are drawn to _____ or I dwell on _____ or I think he _____?
• Do I love God with all my strength, when it is easier just to _____?
• Do I continually ask him to find me, to reveal me to myself, to lose me in him, or do I walk in a "heaven-bound" posture?