For Reading and Meditation:
Mark 10:46-52
We are seeing that the first step to mental and spiritual health is receptivity - we must be willing to empty our hands of whatever we are holding and receive Christ. Life has been defined as response to environment. You and I live physically when we respond to our physical environment - we take in food, light and air. When response is shut off, we die physically. Our spiritual environment is the kingdom of God. When we respond to it, surrender to it, receive our very life from it - then we live happily and abundantly. Take a plant - how does it live? By being proud, self-sufficient, unrelated and unresponsive? No; it lives by surrendering, adjusting, receiving. Suppose a plant tried to live by asserting itself, by trying to "lord" it over the other plants - what would be the result? It would lose its life, for it lives only as it responds to its environment. When it is properly adjusted, it takes in from the air, sun and soil and lives abundantly. The plain truth of what Christ is saying, then, in the words, "Blessed [or happy] are the poor in spirit", is that we must choose to give up whatever we are holding and allow Him to fill our lives with His forgiveness, love and power. A highly cultured and beautiful woman, after reviewing her life, said with a sigh: "I have everything - and nothing." Everything in the way of comfort and riches - yet she was empty in heart. To find happiness, we must find Christ. And how do we find Him? We do what the blind man did in the passage today - fling away our "garment" and run to Jesus.
Blessed Lord Jesus, where else can I run? If I run from You, I shall run away from life, from release, from forgiveness, from freedom and from eternal happiness. So I come, humbly, willingly - and receive. Amen.