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Scripture~Matthew 6.19-21 (CEV)
19Don't store up treasures on earth! Moths and rust can destroy them, and thieves can break in and steal them. 20Instead, store up your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy them, and thieves cannot break in and steal them. 21Your heart will always be where your treasure is.
Wisdom Saying
If God sees that heart corroded with the lust of cares, riddled into caverns by worms of ambition and greed, you heart is as God sees it because He sees things as they are. One day you will be compelled to see~no, to feel~your heart as God sees it. You will know that the corrupted thing within you, a prey to the vilest of diseases, is indeed the center of your being, your very heart.
*The Best of George MacDonald, Ed. Stephen Sorenson.
Comments
George MacDonald (1824-1905) describes the heart spiritually as the innermost chamber. This chamber is wherein springs the divine fountain of your being.
The heart in the biblical sense is seat of will. The Matthew scripture is saying, "Your will is always where your treasure is." Or, as The Message reads, "It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being."
Our heart is created to be tied to the Heart of the Divine. That is our natural Home.
This does not take us out of the world. Rather, the world takes on a spiritualized meaning, an insuperable Beauty, when we see the world through a will given to God in love, humility, and resignation.
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The opposite is necessarily true. We fail to see the Beauty within and the Immanence of the Divine pervading the natural order, when we place the natural order, created out of the Divine, before the order of the Divine world, or Heaven.
Nature is divinized to our seeing, when we experience nature within God, not nature before or without God. We can no more separate nature and the Light, than we can separate the Sun and its beams.
Classical theism and pantheism have failed in this matter of God and nature. Theism has mostly viewed God as outside nature only, rather than the One beyond and within nature; making nature Nature, or spiritually spirited in the One. Pantheism has equated God with nature, making nature God.
Therefore, we give our heart to the Divine, or Heaven, above all else. In so doing, we protect our innermost essence from losing its full Life and Enjoyment of all things in Christ, the Word, from Whom all nature arises before us. Great is our spiritual loss and the consequences, if we divorce the Divine from nature, treating our earthy environment as godless. However, let us not esteem the apparent nature of Nature as deserving of our will and devotion apart from the Essence that makes it truly spiritualized in the Cosmic Word wording all creation.
Suggested Reflection
How do you integrate the experience of nature in devotion to the Divine?
Where is the direction of your will? Give evidence to support your answer.
See next page for Purpose of OneLife, autobiographical data, and references to the writer's writings.
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