#inward guide

Let God’s guidance control your hearts. Never try to impose your will on someone else. It’s not our job to tell others how they must live but to encourage them to listen to the Guide.

Thou wert not created to follow thy own thoughts, conceivings, and imaginations, nor the motions of the flesh, nor enticements of the serpent; but another Guide is appointed for thee, which all that are ignorant of, go astray from their youth. Now, this Guide is not afar off, that thou needest say, Who shall ascend or descend or go beyond the seas to fetch it? But it is near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst hear it and obey it, and be guided by it. 

In my study of early Friends [Quakers], I found a message of hope and faith that tendered me more deeply and completely than any great piece of music – something I can share with others to help steer them toward what I have found to be a lifelong companion and inward teacher. This message of Christ’s inward coming brings with it an amazing ability to tender our hearts and consciences and transform our lives, and maybe even our world! With this Living Presence of Christ comes the promise of divine love and support that will remain with us throughout the seasons.

We sometimes speak as if the days of the early Friends are long gone. In some ways, their time was very different from our own. It is a blessing that we do not feel the need to become a seventeenth-century reenactment society, that we can hold our history lightly. In doing that, however, we must be careful not to persuade ourselves that a great wall divides us from the days when Fox prayed, the earth shook, and God was near at hand. Let’s hold our history lightly because we know—experimentally—that Christ is as close as he ever was. Just as Fox did, just as the apostles did, we can know Christ for ourselves as our Friend and Guide; we can be anchored on this everlasting foundation; and we may then be gathered and transformed, again and afresh, in our day.