NACR Daily Meditation for Thursday, Dec 8, 2005

[nacrmed at nacronline.com]

************************************************************

NACR Daily Meditation for Thursday, Dec 8, 2005

************************************************************

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that
you may be healed.James 5:16

Sometimes honest confession can seem astonishing, impossible, and dangerous.
Because we have learned silence so well, we experience honesty as full of
risk. After all, if we are honest, then other people will know what we think
and feel. We will be exposed. The appearance of strength and competence
we work so hard to cultivate will have to share the stage with our weaknesses,
our failings, our sins.

When we practice honesty as a daily discipline, however, something happens
to us. The promise of this text begins gradually to grow in our lives. We
begin to heal. It is not a dramatic, once-for-all-time, quick-fix kind of
healing. Nor is it a private healing, a healing that happens only 'inside'
our heads or in secret with God. 

Honesty leads to healing because people can now express their love for us
in practical ways. Honesty leads to healing because we no longer have to
pay the high tariffs that pretense demands. We heal because the experience
of acceptance counteracts the contempt we so easily heap on ourselves. We
heal because we are no longer alone. We heal because we are known and loved.

Honesty is a discipline with a promise. We will be healed.

Lord, give me the humility and
the courage
to practice confession today.
Heal me as I do the work of honesty.
Amen.

Copyright 1991 Dale and Juanita Ryan 
 
************************************************************
ROOTED IN GOD'S LOVE (the book from which these meditations are taken, is back in print! To order call our office at 714-529-6227 ext 111 or order online at

http://www.nacronline.com/dox/store/nacrbooks.shtml
 
************************************************************
Meditations from previous days can be viewed at:  

http://two.pairlist.net/pipermail/nacrmed/
 
************************************************************
To be removed from this list go to this website:

http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/nacrmed