E&W 3-2-14

Sacred Story

Encouragements & Wisdom: March 2, 2014

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Encouragements and Wisdom: March 2, 2014 (PDF).

E & W reflections are additional helps for your Sacred Story prayer journey. Reflect on them at week’s beginning or outside of your 15-minute prayer periods.

The Affirmations

I will give thanks for what angers and upsets me for identifying their source will help to set me free.

The previous Affirmation addressed the difficulty of purging anger from our hearts and minimizing its destructive influence in our lives. This affirmation seeks to help you see the angers and upsets that you experience as opportunities for grace and healing.

We humans are gifted with sense perceptions that are physical, spiritual and emotional. We automatically pull away from hot objects because we know they will burn us. Spiritually, we can become sensitive to inspirations from sources of light and darkness. From this we learn which to avoid and which to welcome.

We can also take our most difficult emotions such as anger, and use them as moments of self-understanding and healing. The things that make us angry can provide valuable information about what frightens, hurts or damages us. Paying attention to the emotion when it erupts and thanking God for the “emotional perception” it provides can help you unlock its secrets.

Here is one way to go about this process. First, distance yourself from the immediate reaction to the emotion by turning to God and thanking God for the gift of your emotional self-awareness. Second, ask God for the grace to understand the origin of the angers so that you can better see the outlines of your life story. Third, ask for deep healing and forgiveness. This forgiveness is both for those individuals you need to forgive, and individuals whose forgiveness you need to seek when your angers have become destructive instead of instructive.
 

Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for the gift of emotional self-awareness. For even those things that anger us can open our hearts to your grace and deepen our self-understanding. Help us always turn to you in our angers and thank you for the ways you transform them into moments of healing and peace,
so that in all things we can live
Creation, Presence, Memory, Mercy and Eternity.

With God is my safety and my glory,
he is the rock of my strength; my refuge is in God.
Trust in him at all times, O my people!
Pour out your hearts before him.

(Psalm 62: 8-9)

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