pages 3 and 4 of the book

Hello, I'm going to start with the very first meditation in the book:

"Breakaway Invitation
Many people wake up each morning not to the sound of an alarm clock, but to the whir of a vibrator under their pillows. These people live in a silent world. They are deaf.

Most of us think that blindness is worse than deafness. But Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, considered deafness the greater handicap.

When you are without hearing, an important door to the everyday world closes. Turning on the radio is useless. Watching TV becomes a bland experience. You can't understand the people around you, even their simplest questions. You begin to feel lonely and abandoned.

Soon, you begin avoiding the hearing world, associating only with the deaf. You become a stranger in your own land.

The tragic plight of the deaf illustrates the plight of many Christians today. They have become strangers in their own land. Spiritually, they have become deaf and dumb--unable to speak to God in prayer, and unable to hear God speak to them.

Though this spiritual plight is as old as time, it is especially prevalent in modern times. Tennessee Williams refers to it in his play The Night of the Iguana:

Hannah: Liquor isn't your problem, Mr. Shannon.

Shannon: What is my problem, Miss Jelkes?

Hannah: The oldest one in the world--the need to believe in something or in someone.

What can we do about this problem? Laurence Gould answers bluntly: "We must stop gagging on the world "spiritual". We must rediscover and reassert our faith."

But how do we refind and reassert our faith? The gospel points to the answer.

One day, some people brought a deaf and dumb man to Jesus to be healed. Jesus took the man off alone, away from the crowd, and restored his health.

To be healed of our spiritual deafness and dumbness we must present ourselves to Jesus for healing. Concretely, this means we must "break away" from the crowd, go off with Jesus alone, and spend time with him in daily prayer."

This is an experiment to see if this long meditation goes through. If you would like to comment on it, you can go to http://mustardseedlibrary.blogspot.com You just click on the part that says "comment" and a box will open up for you to post your own thoughts on Mark Link (the author), on his thinking about prayer and about Jesus and our relationship to Him.

God bless,
Sharon