Deepening what we already have

I tell you, do not worry about your life Matthew 6:25

I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. (Matthew 6:25,26)

A linear journey?

This talk of transition and crossing thresholds may convey two wrong impressions. This first is that our journey of faith is essentially a linear one, the second that our life is to be one solely of restlessness, something akin to homelessness. First then, linearity...

In prayer we discover what we already have. You start from where you are and you deepen what you already have, and you realise you are already there. We already have everything but we don’t know it and don’t experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess. (Martin Laird, Into the silent land).

Going down

The Christian mystics with one voice are keen to turn our focus away from linearity, from looking compulsively ahead or behind. The tug to the next moment is subtle and pervasive. In crossing a threshold we drop down into a deeper sense of what is already there, into what is and the richness of the present moment, where God is available to us here and now. They remind us that everything has (already) been given to us in Christ.