My Meditatio on Beatitude #5

  Healthy are those that extend grace for they shall find their own prayers answered.
  From the Aramaic Translation -Blessings of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz

Meditatio is the second component of Lectio Divina and follows the choosing of the verse for the week (Lectio). You are invited to consciously think of meditatio from 10:00-2:00pm every day..right during the noon hour, the middle of the day when you will probably find many opportunities to extend grace or mercy.

It is not surprising that there are two effects for extending grace or mercy to other people, one is “Health”- from the root word translated as “Blessed” and the other is answered prayer.  Two thousand years ago, there were no scientific studies to validate the connection between stress and negative health outcomes. However, now we know what happens when there is no grace, compassion, mercy, forgiveness or love extended to others who have wronged you. The stress generated by bitterness, hatred, animosity, unforgiveness literally kills you slowly.  The hormones and other blood borne chemicals elicited by a constant state of upset will exacerbate any negative health condition and at the same time dampen the immune response. If you are sick it will be harder to get well and will take longer. Plus you are more likely to get sick. This is a huge price to pay in order to be right and make another wrong about something…even if they truly were in the wrong.

Forgiveness requires spiritual maturity and one of the disciplines involved in spiritual maturity is the ability to govern the thoughts that you think.  As someone once said, “I can’t do much about the birds that fly overhead, but I can keep them from nesting in my hair.” Thoughts will come and go but negative thoughts about yourself or someone else need not “build a nest in your hair.”  Continue to practice identifying negative thoughts about yourself or others and consciously extend grace and mercy.

The other consequence of extending grace and mercy to others is answered prayer. If you can identify an area for which you have not yet received an answer to your prayer see if you can also identify a person or group, which are in much need of your mercy and grace.  This Beatitude suggests that there may be a connection. 

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Write in your journal about a past unresolved upset. Be vigilant with yourself, bring to mind a situation where you felt you had been wronged and send grace and compassion to the person that did it. IF you can’t think of a personal incident than turn on Fox news and send grace and compassion to Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.  No seriously,  hold the thought of a staunch right wing, Obama-hating Republican and send them grace and mercy. They need the compassion and we need the practice.