Pater Noster

If I were truly willing to lay down my life for Christ, others would be able to see him, but as it stands now, I am all talk.  As C.S. Lewis wrote,

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love - a scholar's parrot may talk Greek -
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

One experiences a certain kind of hell when saying the things they know others want to hear, and knowing that with every word, their hypocrisy is layered and refined into an artful deception.  How I pray that merely a fraction of my soul would be about His business, and not mine.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:1-2)

"For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do." (Galatians 5:17)

Lord, I grow so weary of this selfish flesh.