Find Yourself Being The Church

“Let your eyes look straight forward, and let your eyelids assent to righteous things. Make straight paths for your feet and direct your ways aright. Do not turn aside to the right or to the left, but turn your foot from an evil way; For God knows the ways on the right hand, but those on the left are perverse; And He shall make your paths straight and guide your steps in peace.”

~ Proverbs 4:24-28

My brothers and sisters, although we all have busy lives, and may not be able to dedicate ourselves to the fast as much, or as intensely as we would like, The Lord sees and honors our dedication to try. We are not monastics, and cannot withdraw ourselves from the world completely, but we can live as holy as possible in it. Though my days can be hectic, my prayers have continually gone up for us all, and my body offered as a living sacrifice through today’s fast.

Here is a golden nugget that The Holy Spirit deposited in my for this attempted obedience: the call to holiness is a straight, narrow, and long road. Along that road there are sights, attractions, and detours built up be the devil to distract us from the vision, mission, and purpose that God has called us to. They may at first seem innocent, harmless, or maybe even beneficial to us. This however is the insidious agenda of the enemy. The more sights you stop to see; the more attractions you attend yourself to; the more detours and shortcuts you take, the more complicated and tedious the journey to holiness becomes.

I’m sure that in all of our lives, we have all experienced this fact first hand. But don’t let the distractions deter you!!! Listen to our father among the Saints, St. Cyril who was Bishop of Alexandria in the 5th century, who says “It is necessary that, before other things, you have a sound mind within yourselves and that you be mindful of holy Scripture addressing you and saying, “Let your eyes look straight ahead.” … To slip away from the rightness of holy doctrines would be nothing else except to sleep in death. We depart from this rightness when we do not follow the divinely inspired Scriptures.”