soil of the soul, monday

Monday, September 1

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer: Father, allow the soil of my soul to be a place that is fertile and receptive to all that you desire to plant in my heart.  Tend it carefully and nurture all that has sprung up in me that is of you; that I may be a garden of your delight. Through Jesus.  Amen.

                                                      

Scripture Reading for the Day: Mark 4:26-29

Reading for Reflection:

 

     Living things need an appropriate climate in order to grow and bear fruit.  If they are to develop to completion, they require an environment that allows their potential to be realized.  The seed will not grow unless there is soil that can feed it, light to draw it forth, warmth to nurture and moisture that unlocks its vitality.  Time is also required for its growth to unfold.

     Meditation is the attempt to provide the soul with the proper environment in which to grow and become.  In the lives of people like St. Francis or St. Catherine of Genoa one gets a glimpse of what the soul is able to become.  Often this is seen as the result of heroic action lying beyond the possibility of ordinary people.  The flowering of the human soul, however, is more a matter of the proper spiritual environment than of particular gifts or disposition or heroism.  How seldom we wonder at the growth of the great redwood from a tiny seed dropped at random on the littered floor of the forest.  From one seed is grown enough wood to frame several hundred houses.  The human soul has seed potential like this if it has the right environment.  Remember that only in a few mountain valleys were the conditions right for the Sequoia gigantean, the mighty redwood, to grow.

     For both the seed and the soul, these things all take time.  In both cases there is need for patience.  Most of us know enough not to poke at the seed to see if it is sprouting, or to try to hurry it along with too much water or fertilizer or cultivation.  The same respect must be shown for the soul as its growth starts to take place.  Growth can seldom be forced in nature.  Whether it is producing a tree or a human personality, nature unfolds its growth slowly, silently. (The Other Side of Silence by Morton T. Kelsey)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

         

Closing Prayer: Thank you, O Lord, that you are always at work in the soil of my soul whether I can see it or not.  Give me wisdom and discernment to know how to give your seed the most fertile soil possible for it to grow.  And then let me trust you to do the rest.  Grow your life in me.  Through Jesus.  Amen.