Spiritual Solutions

Someone asked Jesus, “Teacher, can you tell me how to attain eternal life?”

By eternal life, of course, he’s talking about the life of God present now and not some time in the future. Eternal life is now, when we recognize, know, experience and express the fullness of God’s presence in our lives. That’s eternal life – and it’s right now!

How can we attain that?

Jesus said to the man, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

He didn’t say to love the Lord your God just a little bit, or just on Sundays, but he said “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” It’s a full commitment, a total commitment. How do you do that? How do you feel and know and experience God’s presence with you at all times, in all places, all around you and within you at all times? How do you do that?

There’s a story from the scriptures that demonstrates how this begins to become possible. The story is from the gospel of Mark, in Mark 14:1-6. It’s during the time just before Passover and not long before the Crucifixion; and the chief priests and scribes were seeking how to arrest Jesus and kill him.

 “And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. But there were some who said to themselves indignantly, ‘Why was the ointment thus wasted? For this ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and give to the poor.’ And they reproached her. But Jesus said, ‘Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.’”

This is about two different kinds of people and two different kinds of motive. We see the motives of the Pharisees and scribes; they hang around with Jesus, but their motive was not pure. They may have eaten with him, but they were not fully engaged with him or his teachings, nor really the love of God which they professed. They became very critical of the woman for her actions; they tore her down. That was their focus in life, which was their motive. It came out of doing things as a sense of duty or responsibility or fear.

When we do things out of obligation, or when the motive in our lives is one that is underscored by fear, then our life is filled with criticism. We begin to resent the things that we do; so we begin to criticize and put things down. We say that this world is not a good world, it’s not a friendly universe, and this is reflected back to us in bad experiences. So we must watch our motive.

You see, this story is not only about the Pharisees and scribes and the woman and Jesus in the long ago; it is about us right now.

There are Pharisees and scribes that live in us that sometimes get into those critical modes of being. We begin to look from the world viewpoint. And you know people who are critical all the time. From the time the alarm goes off in the morning, the coffee’s too strong, the day is ugly whether it’s hot or cold or sunny or raining or whatever, and then they do nothing but complain at work or at home. You know what I’m talking about. So the world is reflected back to them as an unfriendly world and they find much to criticize.

We need to look at ourselves and see if we’re coming from a place of obligation or doing things out of a sense of duty. Or are we doing things out of a sense of love? Are we looking at the world through the eyes of love? Years ago, James Dillet Freeman wrote a book called “Look with the Eyes of Love” which had a powerful impact on my life; I realized that when we look with the eyes of love; we are seeing as God sees.

How do we love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind? We can only do it with the expression of God in and through us.

When we really love, we are extravagant in our love, aren’t we? We give extravagantly, we don’t hold back. Any time that you have been in love, haven’t you wanted to give extravagant gifts? It maybe seemed foolhardy at the time. But that’s the process of giving yourself totally, isn’t it? You want to give; there’s no counting of the cost, is there?

The danger, really, is in feeling a sense of obligation in our giving.

In the gospel of John (John 11:1-2), we are told that the woman in the scriptures who broke the vial of precious ointment over the head of Jesus was Mary, the sister of Martha and of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead.

Mary is the opposite of obligation; in this story she is the very principle of love expressed. That’s what it’s about, the extravagant gift of love.

Jesus said, in the story, “Don’t trouble her. She has done a beautiful thing to me.” Or, she has done something of wonderful significance for me. Isn’t that something we want to do for ourselves and others? We want to be of a wonderful significance in our world, don’t we?

That’s what the Christ within is saying to us now “Do you want to be of wonderful significance in your world?” If you do, let the love which is of God express through you. Because that’s the only way we can see it.

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