receiving with humility

photo by KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA via Pexels

 
What do we have heavenly Father,
    that we have not received from you?
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
    coming down from the Father of lights.
And because everything we have is yours 
    – whether for body or soul –
    how can we be proud, boasting about things 
    that are not even our own?
And as you give, so you are also able to take away again.
And you will, when your gifts are abused, won’t you?
If we fail to acknowledge that you are the giver?
 
So take away all my arrogance and pride.
Instead, graft in true humility, 
    so I may know that you are the giver of all good things,
    and be thankful for them,
    and use them for your glory and the good of my neighbor.
Grant also that I may not glory in earthly creatures,
    but in you alone.
You bring mercy, equity, and righteousness on earth,
    and to you alone be all glory, amen.
 
Thomas Becon, 1511–1567, English Protestant reformer Norfolk
 
______________________________
 
 
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, 
    coming down from the Father of lights, 
    with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change

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Come, Lord, enter my heart

image / pixabay / public domain
 
Come, Lord, enter my heart,
    you who are crucified, who have died, who love,
    who are faithful, truthful, patient, and humble,
    you who have taken upon yourself a slow and toilsome life
    in a single corner of the world,
    denied by those who are your friends,
    betrayed by them, subjected to the law,
    made the plaything of politics right from the very first,
    a refugee child, a carpenter’s son, a creature who found
    only barrenness and futility as a result of his labors,
    a man who loved and who found no love in response,
    you who were too exalted for those about you to understand,
    you who were left desolate,
    who were brought to the point of feeling yourself forsaken by God,
    you who sacrificed all,
    who commend yourself into the hands of your Father,
    you who cry, “My God, my Father, why have you forsaken me?”
 
I will receive you as you are,
    make you the innermost law of my life,
    take you as at once the burden and the strength of my life.
 
When I receive you I accept my everyday just as it is.
I do not need to have any lofty feelings in my heart to recount to you.
I can lay my everyday before you just as it is,
    for I receive it from you yourself,
    the everyday and its inward light,
    the everyday and its meaning,
    the everyday and the power to endure it,
    the sheer familiarity of it,
    which becomes the dimmedness of your eternal life.
 
Karl Rahner, 1904 – 1984, German Jesuit theologian
 
_______________________________
 
 
And this is eternal life, 
    that they know you the only true God, 
    and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

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