Friday, June 12, 2020

Steering the Ship Through Uncertain Waters

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(Lake Michigan sunset, June 11, 2020)

8 AM. June 12, 2020.

I awake to the Three Uncertainties.

  • Covid-19.
  • The economy.
  • The George Floyd tragedy.
The need is for leadership, for the manifestation of the spiritual gift of administration. 

The biblical Greek word for administration is kubernesis. It refers to a captain who steers a ship toward a goal.

This involves more than human ability. The gift is spiritual, meaning its occurence is Holy Spirit-produced. Divine wisdom and direction is imparted to the recipient of this gracious gift.

I am praying for the manifestation of a supernatural seeing, in myself, and in our church's leaders.

How will this happen? 

It will happen as I stay focused, and contemplative. I am reminded of this today as I re-read a section of Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation. He writes:


If, then, we want to seek some way of being holy, we must first of all renounce our own way and our own wisdom. We must “empty ourselves” as He did. We must “deny ourselves” and in some sense make ourselves “nothing” in order that we may live not so much in ourselves as in Him. We must live by a power and a light that seem not to be there. We must live by the strength of an apparent emptiness that is always truly empty and yet never fails to support us at every moment. 

This is holiness. 

None of this can be achieved by any effort of my own, by any striving of my own, by any competition with other men. It means leaving all the ways that men can follow or understand.

Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation (pp. 64-65).