Today’s Reading: Fear is having faith, but it’s placing your faith in the wrong things. Fear is placing your faith in the “what ifs”. So much of our fears are focused on things that may or may not happen. There is no reason to fear things that might not even happen. Even people in the Bible struggled in fearing their own “what ifs”. You will read today about Moses’ “what if” fear and how God gave him strength to overcome his fear.
What are some of the “what ifs” that fuel your fears?
Fear of the what if’s cause anxiety for me, and I can get really impatient about all circumstances, and with myself. Once I lose patience with myself I’m pretty counter productive.
One of my favorite passages (from the one’s of his I’ve read thus far) is below: (perfection=holiness)
Know that patience is the one virtue which gives greatest assurance of our reaching perfection, and while we must have patience with others, we must have it with ourselves. Those who aspire to the pure love of God need to be more patient with themselves than with others. We have to endure our own imperfections in order to attain perfection; I say ‘endure patiently’…..humility is nurtured through such endurance.
In truth we have to admit that we are weak creatures who scarcely do anything well; but God, who is infinitely kind, is satisfied with our small achievements and is very please with the preparation of our heart…..
Anyone who reflects the grandeur of God and the immensity of His goodness and dignity…prepares for him a body that is crucified and not rebellious, an attention to prayer that is not distracted, gentle conversation free of rancor, and a humility in which there are no bursts of vanity. All this is very good; these are fine preparations, but there is still more that we must do to serve God as we should. When all this preparation is done, it remains to be seen who will carry it out, for when it comes to putting all this into practice; we fall short and realize that these perfections can be neither so grand nor so absolute in us. We can crucify the flesh, but not so perfectly that it doesn’t rebel; in prayer, our attention will often be interrupted by distractions; and so with the other things I have mentioned.
Must we, for that reason, be worried, anxious, pressured, distressed? Certainly not… I don’t mean that we shouldn’t head in the direction of perfection, but that we mustn’t try to get there in a day… In order to journey steadily, we must apply ourselves to doing well the stretch of the road immediately before us on the first day of the journey, and not waste time wanting to do the last lap of the way while we still have to make it through the first.
I have one last thing to tell you, so remember it well: we are sometimes so busy being good angels that we neglect to be good men and women. Our imperfections are going to accompany us to the grave. We can’t go anywhere without having our feet on the ground, yet we don’t just lie there, sprawled in the dust. On the other had, we mustn’t think we can fly, for we are like little chicks who don’t’ have wings yet.We die little by little; so our imperfections bust die with us, a little each day. Dear imperfections, they force us to acknowledge our misery, give us practice in humility, selflessness, patience, and watchfulness; yet not withstanding, God looks at the preparation of our heart and sees that it is perfect….
-Francis de Sales Spiritual Direction of Francis de Sales (the letters)
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