Christ is risen!
Listen to our Lord Jesus respond to the demand of the crowd that He speak plainly to them and tell them if He is the Christ or not: “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness to me…” (see John 10:17-28)
My grandmother once told me an old saying she had heard from her mother: “Your actions are so loud, I can’t hear what you are saying.”
The truth is our behavior betrays our true beliefs.
Now before you run off and say “Oh no, one of those sermons!” let me add this isn’t a negative. The reason this is such valuable information is that you get to decide if you really want to be the person your behaviors declare you to be. The enemy of our souls wishes us to remain blind to the connection between who we really are and what we do. His greatest tool is to keep us divided in our own hearts, blind to the connection between our attitudes, actions, and beliefs.
Most of us have a really clear understanding of what kind of person we should be. The Self-help industry has made a fortune telling us how to merely modify our behaviors and our thoughts to achieve “success.” But still we struggle with the cognitive dissonance that drives much of our internal and even external sadness and feelings of powerlessness.
But you were made to see clearly. You were created in God’s image to be made into His likeness. You were given, unique among all creation, the ability to enter into loving communion with your Creator. The fathers call that place in the heart that can see clearly the Creator, the “nous.” They declare that it is precisely the darkening of the “nous” that blinds us spiritually and makes the prison of our souls all the more powerful.
The faith offers us a deeper way to freedom than mere behavior modification or “possibility thinking.” Mere pietism has also proven to be a dead end to becoming what we were created to be.
The faith invites us to a relationship with the Uncreated; a real and loving connection with God that transfigures us beyond the limits of our human strength. That path, that spiritual therapy, is the Orthodox Way. The spiritual disciplines, the theology, the liturgy, and the witness of the saints all combine to create a “perfect storm” of spiritual health, and all it requires is our desire to be healed.
Today, do you wish to “see”? Do you wish to polish your soul to a high gleam so that it does what it was created to do – reflect the Face of God to the whole creation? Then continue to offer your free “yes” to God’s moment by moment invitation to healing and spiritual freedom. Today, keep saying yes to God.
