If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.I met that verse years ago with the same shock I privately registered when I read that Jesus, facing his crucifixion, asked God if there was a way out. A human moment, I guess.
If that was his human moment, the verse above is one of his most divine moments.
We spend the first half of life under the express influence of our family only now to be asked to hate them? What could possibly be divine about that?
It takes language that strong to underscore the importance of the discovery yet at hand in our second half of life. Something is about to wrestle its way to the top of our consciousness, as if breaking through the water's surface after years of residing in the deep. It is our soul and its longing to direct us to a new home and family while yet on earth.
Our soul, through necessary suffering (Day 5), will commandeer the ship that is our life with a new direction, new longing, but that in truth, is not new at all. It is steering us to the home where we began before we were birthed into our nuclear family home.
The union of our souls with God at a newly conscious level is a love so great, so immeasurable, that any family we have known pales in comparison. In fact, because so many refuse to sojourn here, some of our very family will try to limit us with the confines of their critical spirit and notion that what they have in the first half of life is sufficient. That is our goodbye call.
I look around and see anger, frenzy, despair, loneliness, depression. The chase seems to be leading everywhere but to the deep, where the discovery lies. The homesickness of soul that drives all of us is not given permission to find its soulmate that is God.
Necessary suffering leads to home and the unveiling of the deep.
Unnecessary refusal to go this route leads to misery and despair.
Only one feeds our strength.
