April 27

Read: Matthew 6:19-24

If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light (Matthew 6:22).

The Light Within

“Guidance of life by the Light within… proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions — contemptus mundi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world — amor mundi. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And He hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.

“Such loosing of the chains of attachment is easy, if we be given times of a sense of unutterable nearness of Himself. In those moments what would we not leave for Him? For some persons… the work of detachment.., exists chiefly as an intellectual obligation… Still others obstruct this detachment, reject it as absurd or unneeded, and cling to mammon while they seek to cling to God.

“Double-mindedness in this matter is wholly destructive of the spiritual life. Totalitarian are the claims of Christ. No vestige of ‘our’ rights can remain. Straddle arrangements and compromises between our allegiances to the surface level and the divine Center cannot endure. Unless the willingness is present to be stripped of our last earthly dignity and hope, and yet still praise Him, we have no message. Nor have we yielded to the monitions of the Inner Instructor.

“But actually completed detachment is vastly harder than intended detachment. Fugitive islands of secret reservations elude us. Rationalizations hide them. Intending absolute honesty, we can only bring ourselves steadfastly into HIS presence and pray, ‘Cleanse thou me from secret faults.’ And in the X-ray light of Eternity we may be given to see the dark spots of life, and divine grace may be given to reinforce our will to complete abandonment in Him. For the guidance of the Light is critical, acid, sharper than a twoedged sword. He asks all, but He gives all” (A Testament of Devotion, by Thomas R. Kelly).