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STRONGER AND STRONGER INSIDE
June 14, 2009
Twenty years ago I bought a book titled
"Twenty-seven Translations of the Bible." Actually, it is not 27
translations but the best of 27 translations. I would never part with
that book.
One verse came to life for me on this day in 1988 when I was doing my
morning meditation. It reads, "He who has clean hands shall be stronger
and stronger."
Surely you have noticed a quiet strength in people who simply live good
lives. Just to be in their presence is to have strength and goodness
imparted to us.
"So," you might be thinking, "Jesus had clean hands and it got him
killed." No, it just got his body killed and our bodies are the most
impermanent part of us. Those who had been around him daily for three
years assimilated so much of His quiet strength, the power of his clean
hands, that they, too, became stronger and stronger.
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King's birthday. His body was killed in
Memphis but each year he grows stronger and stronger. The power of his
words makes the timid brave. It made a tiny little black woman named
Rosa Parks refuse to move to the back of a bus and cower down like a
worthless, inferior person. It made her realize the same God who made
the president made her and therefore, she was just as important in His
eternal scales. The power imparted to us by King and Parks makes people
stand and risk their lives for justice.
The greatest power of all truths comes when they are personalized. As I
personalized "he who has clean hands shall be stronger and stronger," I
saw the highest meaning is that a person who has clean hands becomes
stronger and stronger inside. Inside their own being!
Every time we do right just because it is right, we strengthen the
muscles in our own souls. We sense a Presence and it is more than the
presence of God. It is the presence of everyone who has ever done the
right thing just because it was the right thing.
Hebrews mentions a "cloud of witnesses" to our lives and when you read
the chapter preceding that verse, it mentions a long list of people who
did right simply because it was right. They are with us. Their strength
has become our strength.
Once we experience that quiet inner strength and joy, and we do
experience it every time we do the right thing even in the smallest
decisions, we cannot be satisfied to sell our souls, to blithely stand
by while people are mistreated. And it's not necessarily a religious
thing. I know an agnostic who lives his life this way and he inspires
me. It's the best way to live.
These universal laws are set up to reward anyone of any belief system or
of no belief system. The truth sets you free and seeing any part of any
truth sets you free to the full extent of the power of that truth.
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