Day 11 1/11/13 Sabbath Epiphany Energy Meditation

Day 11 1/11/13 - Sabbath Epiphany Energy Meditation    
New Thing- Investigating Spiritual Energy Grid        
Inspiration: Paul's Letter to the Romans, Women's Bible Study  
Time: About 30 minuets 
Bottom Line: Investigating Energy Leaks

 
Reflection: In our St. David's Women's Bible Study (which I lead every Thursday morning at 9:00--shameless plug) this year, we have been tackling Paul's letter to the Romans. This week were were discussing chapters 6-7 which contains some of Paul's defense of the law. In this passage, he is making the complex theological argument that although Christ has come and set us free from the law (ie- the Laws of Moses), we do ourselves no favors if we think that it it worthless, or worse, the cause of our sin. He writes in 7:7:

What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’  

In other words, it is not the law that cause us to sin--no, that would just be our own actions. Sorry about that! The good news is that God has written his law on our hearts (Romans 2:15) and so we will desire to live in His ways through our baptism and being raised to new life in Christ.

So, for our reflection this week, we decided to tie in the Epiphany theme of "Christ's Light being manifest to the world" and let the law illumine our own hearts and actions.  Since light is energy, we used the law (a.k.a the 10 Commandments in this meditation) to create a "spiritual energy grid" to see what our energies/lights are going towards and how might they be better spent. We made three columns: The middle one had each of the 10 Commandments listed. The right was labeled "sin/how we are wasting our energy/light on something that is not God" and the right one was "grace/how we can rewire our actions to be in line with God's will." For each of the Commandments, we investigated the ways we might be failing to live up to the law and then prayerfully discerned ways God has called us to live instead. For example, one woman lifted up her reflection on "Thou shalt not commit adultery." She said that the sin in this case might not be as overt as actually having an affair, but could included belittling your spouse as a form of compromising the union. The "rewiring" action could be to covenant to pray with each other everyday. We had a really interesting discussion. So interesting in fact that I did not have time to do this meditation myself. Thus, today's Sabbath practice was dedicated to trying this out.

I really did see things that I didn't even know were there--but also could see how there could be changes with God's help. The law, in this case, was like a flashlight shining in corners that I hadn't looked at for a while.