“There is an easiness in salvation which is more difficult for us than all our efforts.” - Simone Weil
These words of Simone Weil show me, again and again, how often we fall back to the common way of muscular efforts, active worry, distress and constant striving. And while we often complain how difficult this is, how much we have to do, and how we are drowning in responsibility, it is actually the easier way. It is the broad path. Weil says these efforts are much easier for us to do than looking to God, because looking is dying, looking is denying one’s self. It is surrendering to his sovereign care, trusting in the midst of problems, consenting to his divine choice for our lives, which often involves sickness, persecution, abandonment, loneliness, betrayal. All the effort involved on our part should be the effort by which a fiancé accepts her lover, says Weil.
In a similar way, Kierkegaard explains the lilies of the valley. Look at them! All their effort amounts to an active acceptance of their creator’s sovereign choice to be planted where they are planted, whether that is a muddy road or a beautiful garden, whether they are meant to be picked for a vase or whether the thoughtless boots of the by-passer will soon crush them. Even if they are to flourish in a place where no one will ever notice them, it is enough that their creator has seen them, has delighted in them. That is enough. That is everything.
I preach to myself before preaching to you, my friends. I share with you the comfort my soul receives from the words of great writers.
- Myrto Theocharus
Maundy Thursday
Posts from This Journal “quotable things” Tag
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The coziest feeling in the world
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up;…
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Mere mortals
from "The Weight of Glory", by C.S. Lewis: It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is…
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from Elliot's "The Rock"
Why should men love the chuch? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget. She is tender…
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