On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach a New Testament class at 8:00 a.m. in the morning. This morning on my way to work I just kept thinking about how blessed I am to be able to start the day discussing the birth of Jesus Christ. It just doesn’t get any better than that!
I’ve taught this many times and I’ve read it and studied it every Christmas and more times in between, but this morning (very early!) as I was preparing I saw something that relates to Living in Truth that I had never noticed before. When Mary visits Elizabeth, Elizabeth greets her with a salutation of love and an acknowledgement that the child Mary is carrying will be the Savior of the world. In response Mary praises God in a psalm or canticle called the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). In the middle of this canticle Mary says, “[God] hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”
What hit me today is that “the imagination of their hearts” is the Pit of Illusion, and being in the Pit of Illusion is a form of pride. There are many reasons we fall into the Pit, but all of them go back to the fact of pride. For example, instead of trusting that God knows what is best for us and will guide us, we worry, fear, and fret about what “should be.” That is pride and it is vain imaginations of the heart and what being scattered is to be separated from God.
The moral of the story? Trust in God and Live in Truth!
I LOVE this! Thanks for making another oft-read/sung phrase come to life for me. :)
ReplyDeleteIt was so good to meet you in August, while I visited my sister. Wish I could stayed for the second hour of your practice class. I loved what I heard in the first half.