Luke 5:16 Thursday

But Jesus often withdrew TO LONELY PLACES and prayed. Luke 5:16

Last night Vivian McClellan, resident scholar of the Titus 2 Group (sorry Vivian I know you didn’t want me to say that but I just had to) wrote the following in her response to Amy Hartford’s answer she gave to this week’s forum question on faith, that made me change what I wrote last night regarding today’s meditation, at 6:10 this morning. This is what she wrote and I quote: "Being able to see the power and majesty of God and to feel secure in that power to truly take care of us, becomes much more real when there is "fasting from asking" and more "raising the praising." Even though I had never even considered that this might have been what Jesus did when he went to lonely places and prayed, this may have been exactly what He did. This morning I’ve had to ask myself these questions: “What kinds of questions would a miracle worker ask?” And I repeat, “What kinds of questions would a miracle worker ask God?” And “who was Jesus praying to while here on earth when the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one, anyway?” “Was He talking to Himself? (I don’t think so.) Did he withdraw just because the whole town was standing at the door—the whole town whose illnesses he knew he could heal and whose demons he knew he could cast out—all of them? Did he really go to offer prayers and petitions that sound like ours when we pray? Did I even begin to hit the mark with what I wrote last night? Could it be that Jesus withdrew to a lonely place just to hear the silence God spoke to Him?

Listen to the following excerpt regarding silence that I found in John Main’s book Moments of Christ; The Path of Meditation which more likely reveals why Jesus withdrew to a lonely place and prayed. Read slowly and take in every word.

"I think what all of us have to learn is that we do not have to create silence. The silence is there within us. What we have to do is to enter into it, to become silent, to become the silence. The purpose of meditation and the challenge of meditation is to allow ourselves to become silent enough to allow this interior silence to emerge. Silence is the language of the Spirit.

"With this in mind, then, I kneel in prayer to the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes it names, that out of the treasures of his glory he may grant you strength and power through his spirit in your inner being, that through faith Christ may dwell in your hearts in love (Eph. 3:14-16)."

The words we use in trying to communicate the Christian message in the Christian experience have to be charged with strength and power, but they can only be charged with strength and power if they spring from the silence of the Spirit in our inner being….Leaving behind all other words, ideas, imaginations and fantasies is learning to enter into the presence of the Spirit who dwells in your inner heart, who dwells there in love. The Spirit of God dwells in our hearts in silence, and it is in humility and in faith that we must enter into that silent presence. St. Paul ends that passage in Ephesians with the words, “So may you attain to fullness of being, the fullness of God himself.” That is our destiny.”

I am much more convinced this morning that Jesus’ prayer did not consist of prayers and petitions like ours do, which I had envisioned last night. I believe more likely than not, (like John Main must have felt), that Jesus withdrew to hear the silence so He could experience the FULLNESS of God and asked for nothing.