June 5, 2007

Don't Look Down

Last night I was talking with a young man who works in the construction of tall buildings, building service elevators and scaffolding. He said he was afraid of heights.

"How do you do your job?" I asked.

"I just don't look down. It's worked so far!" he said.

Later on I was thinking about how it's good advice for the spiritual life. The first step in avoiding our sins and little selfishnesses and our bad "tapes" and poor patterns of thinking is to concentrate our intention--our spiritual gaze--on the grace of God. If we "don't look down" into our occasions of sin or into our habitual spiritual pitfalls in the first place, then we will be less likely to be intimidated by them.
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1 comment:

Faithful, or even just thoughtful criticisms are always welcome. Uninformed rudeness to other posters or to the Lord and His Church is not.

I also reserve the right to reject comments promoting things like private revelations and fringe points of view, if it seems to me like they are being presented in a misleading way.

If you raise a disagreement with something I say but I do not respond, please do not feel slighted or insulted, or imagine that this automatically means I disagree or agree with you. It's just that I don't find the comment box to be a constructive medium for certain forms of debate.