Anyway, I'm going through a book on Spiritual Disciplines compiled by a guy named Richard Foster who is responsible for having started the Renovare spiritual development movement. The book is set up to give you a weekly reading. You read that every day during the week, and then do one of the exercises that he gives you. Each month has four readings in one particular discipline, and right now I'm in the "Meditation" discipline. The spiritual discipline exercise I am doing this week goes like this: Find a picture and look at it for a long time.
So I did. I know, it doesn't sound like much of a discipline, but remember, the discipline is not "looking pictures" it is "meditation." So I chose this Icon of Christ to "meditate" on:
I looked at it for a long time, and after about five minutes of being distracted and trying to move the title bars around and stuff, I finally just put it up on the screen with a black background and nothing else, and looked at it for a long time. That's when I started staring into Jesus' eyes and realized just how human he looks.
It really caught me off guard and I found myself staring at this picture for a very long time thinking, "Geez, he's just so human!" The more I looked at the picture, the more I fell in love, and for the first time in my life, I understood the purpose of an Icon. I actually felt myself feeling love for Jesus as I looked at the Icon. It was incredibly moving.
So, there you go. I'm reading through this book, and would TOTALLY recommend it to anyone who wants to work on being more disciplined. The only trick to the book is that you have to actually do the stuff it's asking you to do. (This is the third time I've dug into the book, and the first time I actually did one of the exercises.)
Oh, the book is called Spiritual Classics by Richard Foster. I gotta run. Hope to post again soon!
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