Our Heart’s Capacities

As our soul grows in the love of God and journeys forth toward him, our heart’s capacities also grow and expand: “Thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Ps. 119:32 KJV).
But the sword cuts both ways. While our heart grows in its capacity for pleasure, it grows in its capacity to know pain. The two go hand in hand. What, then, shall we do with disappointment? We can be our own enemy, depending on how we handle the heartache that comes with desire. To want is to suffer; the word passion means to suffer. This is why many Christians are reluctant to listen to their hearts: They know that their dullness is keeping them from feeling the pain of life.
Many of us have chosen simply not to want so much; it’s safer that way. It’s also godless. That’s stoicism, not Christianity. Sanctification is an awakening, the rousing of our souls from the dead sleep of sin into the fullness of their capacity for life. Desire often feels like an enemy, because it wakes longings that cannot be fulfilled in the moment. In the words of T. S. Eliot,

April is the cruelest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire. (The Waste Land )

Spring awakens a desire for the summer that is not yet. Awakened souls are often disappointed, but our disappointment can lead us onward, actually increasing our desire and lifting it toward its true passion. (The Sacred Romance, 200)

A Father's Prayer

Build me a Son, O Lord, who will be strong enough
To know when he is weak, and brave enough
To face himself, when he is afraid;
One who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat.
And humble and gentle in victory.

Build me a Son, whose wishbone will not be
Where his Backbone should be;
A son, who will know Thee
And that to know himself is
The foundation stone of knowledge.

Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort,
But under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge.
Here let him learn to stand up in the storm;
Here, let him learn compassion for those who fail.

Build me a Son, Whose heart will be clear,
Whose goal will be high;
A Son who will master himself before he seeks to
Master other men;
One who will learn to laugh,
Yet never forget how to weep;
One who will reach into the future,
Yet never forget the past.

And after all these things are his,
Add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor,
So that he may always be serious,
Yet never take himself too seriously.
Give him humility, so that he may always
Remember the simplicity of true greatness,
The Open mind of true wisdom,
The meekness of true strength.

Then, I his Father, will dare to whisper,
“I have not lived in vain.”

~General Douglas MacArthur

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says...

'Oh no....he's awake!!'