Arise, let us go from here. —John 14:31

Daydreaming about something in order to do it properly is right, but daydreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong. In this passage, after having said these wonderful things to His disciples, we might have expected our Lord to tell them to go away and meditate over them all. But Jesus never allowed idle daydreaming. When our purpose is to seek God and to discover His will for us, daydreaming is right and acceptable. But when our inclination is to spend time daydreaming over what we have already been told to do, it is unacceptable and God’s blessing is never on it. God will take the initiative against this kind of daydreaming by prodding us to action. His instructions to us will be along the lines of this: “Don’t sit or stand there, just go!”

If we are quietly waiting before God after He has said to us, “Come aside by yourselves…” then that is meditation before Him to seek His will (Mark 6:31). Beware, however, of giving in to mere daydreaming once God has spoken. Allow Him to be the source of all your dreams, joys, and delights, and be careful to go and obey what He has said. If you are in love with someone, you don’t sit and daydream about that person all the time— you go and do something for him. That is what Jesus Christ expects us to do. Daydreaming after God has spoken is an indication that we do not trust Him.

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Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord. Thank you for bringing us the understanding of dualistic thinking that categorizes everything right or wrong, in or out, for me or against me. And it’s alternative, unitive thinking or whatever we are going to call it…. that accepts paradox and mystery and sees all sides of a situation… Now that we see these two ways of perception, Chambers’ first sentence jumps out and self identifies as dualistic. His very last sentence is also pretty black and white. As are a lot of his sentences, in all of his devotions. That is not to say they don’t contain truth and good concepts to think about. But from where we now stand, we have the tools to at least attempt to separate out what you are saying to us and for us today (CO2MannaToday) from Oswald Chambers’ own ideas that reflect where he was at his time in history, speaking to his intended audience. Is thinking this way, being able to see all sides, and accept the paradox and mystery and seeming contradictions, what Paul was talking about when he said,

Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus….

Yes, and it’s a good example of where unitive thinking is essential. For starters, don’t take things out of context. Read the sections before and after that. That will help you see the different aspects that are all being referred to in that verse.

2 …by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Thank you for the parallel reading that we are doing over on Richard Rohr’s site. The teaching here from Chambers in the last few days can be summarized as, “daydream or meditate until you hear God’s will, then get up and get going” Which is good but leaves us a little short on exactly how to do that? Daydreaming by itself can last and last and (seemingly) never get anywhere… flitting from thought to thought to thought. We seem to need a little guidance in our daydreaming, or it may stay just daydreaming. Inviting you into it is our obvious first step, but Rohr and his guest writers have been giving good guidelines in “Centering Prayer” meditation.

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For those interested, here is today’s devotional from Richard Rohr’s site.

http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/FFED809E5B5A458C/09AC516D97B73F6DF6A1C87C670A6B9F

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