Saturday, September 26

Today’s Readings: Esther 3:1-15; Matthew 5:13-20; Psalm 124

If you are like me, you enjoy sharing the things you love with folks around you that you care about. When I stumbled upon the cool new television show “Glee” this Fall, for instance, I made a point of posting something about how much I liked “Glee” on my Facebook page. When the Houston Texans won a thrilling shoot-out against the Tennessee Titans last Sunday, I was eager to call my brother and email my friends to talk about it. And when I stumbled upon a good local coffee shop named Cables here in Woodland Hills, I made sure to tell Mike (my partner) that we’ll have to check it out when he gets here. Time after time – when something important happens in my life – I go out of my way to talk about it. There’s only one area of my life where that’s not always the case. That area? My spiritual life. Often, when important things happen in this area, I keep it to myself. Why is that? I suppose as a progressive person I’m worried that if I share a spiritual experience, I might inadvertently step on the toes of the person I’m sharing it with – especially if the other person comes from a different faith tradition. There’s also a part of me that’s concerned the person with whom I share might think I’m a religious fanatic and be scared away. Those are just a couple of reasons I sometimes keep my spiritual experiences to myself. In other words, if I’m not careful it’s easy for me to forget about the words attributed to Jesus in today’s reading from Matthew: “God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this…” (Matthew 5:14 from The Message). So how do you handle your spiritual life/spiritual experiences? Are you someone who feels comfortable talking about them with others, or do you go to great lengths to keep those experiences a secret? Til next time…