Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation. Today: the eighth chapter, "The Classical Spiritual Pilgrimage". And on this journey there are - so the wisdom of generations tells me - four stages: awakening, purging, illumination and union. And in this ongoing process of learning to be "in Christ" is the ebb and flow of learning to trust ...
"This yieldedness to God is the 'trust' Groeschel describes as the deepest of the stages of purgation. It is trust that rests one's being totally and completely in God's love and care without demands, conditions or prior expectations. Even in the darkness of God's seeming absence, trust rests the weight of one's being absolutely in God. The psalmist captures this deep inner posture of trust in Psalm 131:
O Lord, my heart is not proud
nor haughty my eyes.
I have not gone after things too great
nor marvels beyond me.
Truly I have set my soul
in silence and peace.
A weaned child on its mother's breast,
even so is my soul.
"The first affirmation expresses the absence of self-concerned anxiety. Then, in the image of the weaned child at its mother's breast, the psalmist reveals the life of absolute trust in God. The unweaned child is at its mother's breast for its own need, its own agenda - milk. The weaned child, however, has no such need or agenda. It is content to rest in the mother's arms and receive whatever attention she chooses to give."
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