WHEN YOU WALK INTO THE GREAT CATHEDRALS your eyes draw your imagination and heart upwards. Where you find yourself consumed. The pillars. Structures. Artwork. Lines. Contours. All magnificently conceived to unite the vast horizon of humanity into a unified movement towards the pinnacle. Heaven.
THIS IS HOW GOD MADE THE WORLD. We can try to examine each of the parts around us, and try to make them the whole, but out of context, not connected to the whole, we are not drawn higher. We miss true majesty and beauty. We remain without the transcendence for which our souls yearn. We remain cut off. Splintered. Imprisoned.
IT'S A MIGHTY WORK OF SATAN to have us fixated on one part of our lives. To disregard everything around it. How it flows into the upward elevation. That's like looking at the Fall in the Sistine Chapel apart from where it leads. Where it's fulfilled. Indeed, in light of which the Fall, or Fault, is even regarded as "Happy."
HERE'S THE BIG QUESTION: Are we doing that in our lives? Standing amidst the cathedral that is our world and remaining fixated on a failure as a parent. Or spouse. Or something we did in the long past. Or a pressing financial circumstance. A broken relationship. A grinding justice issue. The abysmal state of things in our world, and yes, sometimes in our church. Looking at one little piece of our lives and diminishing their connection to the whole. And feeling trapped. Splintered. Languishing.
AMONG OTHER THINGS, in the context of Morning Prayer and our Parent Blessing, every day my wife and I pray for every greater holiness, overflowing into clarity, traction, and provision in our mission.
Having just returned from Rome last night, and overwhelmed with so many amazing thoughts that have yet to be articulated, one super clear takeaway is awareness of the influence of the Demon of Distraction. Note that this demon could care less about the nature of the thing distracting us. It can even be objectively good.
For instance, in the midst of prayer, your mind strays to thinking about your grocery list, or how you need to respond to an email or an important decision you need to make in your mission. If it's not from God, the thing He calls us to, the thing we're meant to be about in that moment, it's a departure from His mission. It's a fixation, if you will, on perhaps a part of a cathedral without regard to where it's pointing.
LORD JESUS CHRIST, in Your Holy Name, help us to recognize the influence of the Demon of Distraction. Through our devices. Through the world around us. Through so many impulses. Help us to deny Them influence. In Your Holy Name right now we renounce them! Cultivate within us an awareness of our mission in You. Flowing from ever deeper authentic prayer in You. Help us to be attentive to Your Voice. And to cultivate its strength in our lives. So that, like the mighty cathedrals, we ourselves might be examples of all things rising up to heaven.
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