Welcome to the eighth episode of Christian Meditation with Anita Mathias.
Let's begin to detach from the world,
To retreat into the inner sanctuary of the self and to begin to breathe deeply,
Quiet in the presence of the God who gave us breath.
Close your eyes,
Sit straight or cross-legged if that's comfortable for you.
Keep your spine straight and begin to breathe.
A deep breath in and out.
Breathe in deeply,
Breathe out fully.
Our breath is the soundtrack of our life.
When we're not okay,
Our breathing is short and ragged.
We are barely breathing.
When we deliberately change our breathing,
Breathing deep,
Long and slow,
Our brain,
Our thinking and our whole bodies begin to work better.
Deliberate,
Slow,
Easy breathing begins to change the chemistry of our brain and bodies,
Increasing the happy neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine and reducing the adrenaline and cortisol which gets us into a fight-or-flight,
Must-do stress state.
So let's start breathing deep and slow.
A deep breath in and out.
As you relax,
Ask for the love of God who is your maker,
Who loves you,
To slowly flow through your body to all the tense,
Tired,
Sad places,
To places of discomfort.
Raise your shoulders to your ears,
Slowly roll them clockwise,
Anti-clockwise,
Repeat.
Stretch your arms upwards,
Cactus them.
I lift them at right angles to your shoulders and then stretch them slightly backwards.
Ball your fists,
Tense your fingers,
Wriggle them.
Send your breath towards your belly.
Place your hand there as you breathe deeply.
Feel your stomach rise and fall.
Continue breathing deeply through to your hips and down to your toes.
Clench them,
Wriggle them,
Relax,
Breathe.
Try another whole body inhale and exhale from your nose to your toes.
The most ancient breath prayer in the Christian tradition is the Jesus prayer.
Try saying it whenever you need to calm down,
Inhaling and exhaling on each clause.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
Have mercy on me a sinner.
Or this version.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
Have mercy on me,
A sinner,
And your beloved friend.
Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy,
Jesus says,
Articulating a law which underlies the physical universe and human life.
What you sow you reap.
I know some gentle merciful ones and indeed they are blessed,
Beloved,
In demand.
The kindness they show,
The thoughtfulness,
Comes back to them with compound interest.
Their lives are relatively free from the interpersonal conflicts and enmities which mask so many lives.
The natural law of sowing and reaping.
What you plant in the soil of your life,
After a brief or lengthy period of dormancy,
Inevitably flows back to you.
Thorns and nettles or apples and cherries.
Life returns sunshine for goodness sown and darkness and trouble for darkness and trouble sown.
Of course the merciful are not immune from suffering in this fallen,
Cracked world.
Human greed polluting our environment and our very cells and greedy people swindling us.
Besides there are demonic principalities and powers,
Spiritual forces of evil,
Contending for the soul and shalom of good people such as Job and many faithful Christians today.
But in the main,
Those who go through life lightly,
Making allowance for human weakness,
Being kind in reviews and tipping and feedback and how they secretly judge others and what they say to or about them,
Meet with somewhat the same gentleness as they go through life.
And mercy is what we need.
We frazzled,
Frail,
Forgetful creatures whose spirit is willing but whose flesh is weak,
Who can so easily give way to unkindness and impulsively say and do things we regret.
We need mercy as we pilgrim through life and so we must rigorously train ourselves to dish it out.
Mercy,
Mercy,
Mercy.
Blessed are the merciful,
Jesus says,
Using the word makarios in Koine Greek or happy.
What is the opposite of being happy or blessed?
It is to be unhappy,
To live with the hatred or curses of others because of one's dishonest or cruel actions.
Being unmerciful and misusing power is an addictive dark pleasure which corrupts the heart,
Soul,
Mind and body,
Creating molecules of cortisol and adrenaline in our brain and body,
Changing their very chemistry.
Those who step out of God's protection with cruelty and unmercifulness inevitably find thorns,
Thistles and stumbling blocks on their path through life.
However,
Sowing and reaping,
The merciful finding mercy while the unmerciful find misery,
Is a terrifying message for us who have not always been merciful,
I among them.
So we who have been unmerciful in speech,
In writing,
In our actions,
Must repent and ask God for forgiveness and he will forgive.
For in the supreme court of God who is the righteous judge of all the world,
Jesus Christ who is love,
Voluntarily bore the punishment,
The sentence that the just laws of the universe of sowing and reaping demand that we suffer.
He bore the penalty for our viscerating words,
Our meanness,
Our stinginess and in what theologians call the divine exchange.
Because he bore the punishment,
Streams of mercy can flow to us,
Streams of good ideas,
Comfort,
The certainty of God's love,
The certainty of being his beloved child and the more we cling to Jesus by faith,
Reading,
Meditating on and almost eating his life-changing words,
The more we experience change in the deep structure of our characters,
Not just in what we do but in who we are,
In the secret places of the heart.
So go through life with as much kindness as you can while being as wise as a serpent and as blameless as a dove.
Repent of past unmercifulness and decide once again to follow Jesus,
To dwell in Jesus,
Hide yourself in Jesus and to be merciful and the love of God and the abundance of his household will flow into you and through you to the world that God so loves.
Becoming merciful will mean a massive change in the deep structure of our hearts and our characters.
It is partly a decision,
However changing who we are needs the spirit of Jesus in us,
Changing us.
It needs Jesus himself within us,
Changing us.
So come,
Lord Jesus,
We welcome you in.
Change us.
Holy Spirit,
Please come,
Change us.
Veni,
Sancti,
Spiritus.
Amen.
