Thursday: Two Civilizations Born out of Two Meditations
WEEK 43
THURSDAY
TWO CIVILIZATIONS BORN OUT OF TWO MEDITATIONS
Luke 18:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18
We saw yesterday that the ten days of chosen idleness before Pentecost were the most important and humanity-changing days in human history. Without them all the ages would have been different, and empty.
Another chosen idleness was of the greatest importance: “I didn’t go up to Jerusalem to the men who were apostles before me either, but I went away into Arabia” (Gal 1:17). This has an importance that is not obvious at first sight; if Paul had gone straight to Jerusalem to the apostles, their stamp would possibly have been upon him. But they had hesitations about the Gentiles, which might have infected Paul and kept him from being an apostle to the Gentiles. A spiritual authoritarianism was gathering around the apostles, which was setting them apart and above in unnatural aloofness. Paul was saved from that. He gained his authority not by his position but by his service. Then the apostles separated the spiritual and the material by saying they would give themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word and would turn over the material to others. Paul kept them together, “You yourselves know that I have provided for my own needs and for those of my companions with my own hands” (Acts 20:34). The material and the spiritual were parts of a living whole with Paul. That was the kind of faith he propagated, and that is the kind of faith we received from him.
Paul went away to Arabia and there in the silence got his gospel as a firsthand thing from God. It would not be a secondhand echo of the supposedly great. So Paul’s gospel could be called “my gospel,” a gospel mediated through his surrender. Arabia became an emancipating retreat. There God talked to Paul vertically, not merely horizontally through others. In the deserts of Arabia two men meditated—one, Mohammed, who meditated about God without Christ and came out at the place of Allah; the other, Paul, who meditated with Christ as his starting point and came out to God, our Lord. Two civilizations were born out of those meditations, the Arab Muslim civilization and the Christian civilization.
O Lord, I see that my silences count. Help me to know the art of listening, of listening to you. Out of those silences may I come with power and love, to love people to you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Perhaps out of my meditations today some new movement will be born.