lilias on focus
via hpz 5.3.26:
Missionary Lilias Trotter, originally from London, England was an amazing artist who had a potential career path direction if she chose to take it. While she loved art, she also felt a calling from God to reach the lost. She began engaging in this call while in London by going out into the streets in the late hours of the night by herself to reach and rescue prostitutes off of the streets. She also felt a calling to share Jesus with the unreached people groups in Algeria in Northern Africa. Responding to this calling would come at a great cost as it would require her to lay down her budding career as an artist.
As she responded to this call, *no mission agencies would send her there or support her mission. Not deterred, she decided to still follow the call of God to Africa and go by herself. She lived among the nationals in the hiddenness of the desert there for forty years. There, in the desert, Trotter knew what it was like to be **stripped from every distraction to focus upon the face of Jesus. She had laid her life down for that one purpose. ***While there, she wrote the poem that later inspired Helen Lemmel’s hymn, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”
*lonely warning ness et al
**any form of m\a\p as cancerous distraction
need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs (aka: what is already on each heart; so we can stop at garden-enough ness et al)
***the little prince – see with your heart ness
“Focussed: A Story and a Song” by Lilias Trotter
“It was in a little wood in early morning. The sun was climbing behind a steep cliff in the east, and its light was flooding nearer and nearer and then making pools among the trees. Suddenly, from a dark corner of purple brown stems and tawny moss, there shone out a great golden star. It was just a dandelion, and half withered—but it was full face to the sun, and had caught into its heart all the glory it could hold, and was shining so radiantly that the dew that lay on it still made a perfect aureole round its head. And it seemed to talk, standing there—to talk about the possibility of making the very best of these lives of ours.
to me.. this is all the stars are a riot of flowers ness..
For if the Sun of Righteousness has risen upon our hearts, there is an ocean of grace and love and power lying all around us, an ocean to which all earthly light is but a drop, and it is ready to transfigure us, as the sunshine transfigured the dandelion, and on the same condition—that we stand full face to God.
again.. to me.. need a means (in this crazy/toxic world) to see/hear what is already on each heart
Gathered up, focussed lives, intent on one aim—Christ—these are the lives on which God can concentrate blessedness. It is “all for all” by a law as unvarying as any law that governs the material universe.
We see the principle shadowed in the trend of science; the telephone and the wireless in the realm of sound, the use of radium and the ultra violet rays in the realm of light. All these work by gathering into focus currents and waves that, dispersed, cannot serve us. In every branch of learning and workmanship the tendency of these days is to specialize—to take up one point and follow it to the uttermost.
has to be all for the dance to dance
And Satan knows well the power of concentration, if a soul is likely to get under the sway of the inspiration, “this one thing I do,” he will turn all his energies to bring in side-interests that will shatter the gathering intensity.
any form of m\a\p as cancerous distraction
And they lie all around, these interests. Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the “good” hiding the “best” even more effectually than it could be hidden by downright frivolity with its smothered heart-ache at its own emptiness.
structural violence.. spiritual violence.. et al.. via ie: graeber violence in care law et al..
It is easy to find out whether our lives are focused, and if so, where the focus lies. Where do our thoughts settle when consciousness comes back in the morning? Where do they swing back when the pressure is off during the day? Does this test not give the clue? Then dare to have it out with God—and after all, that is the shortest way. Dare to lay bare your whole life and being before Him, and ask Him to show you whether or not all is focussed on Christ and His glory. Dare to face the fact that unfocussed good and useful as it may seem, it will prove to have failed of its purpose.
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
ie: pearson unconditional law et al
What does this focussing mean? Study the matter and you will see that it means two things—gathering in all that can be gathered, and letting the rest drop. The working of any lens—microscope, telescope, camera—will show you this. The lens of your own eye, in the room where you are sitting, as clearly as any other. Look at the window bars, and the beyond is only a shadow; look through at the distance, and it is the bars that turn into ghosts. You have to choose which you will fix your gaze upon and let the other go.
see with your heart ness et al
Are we ready for a cleavage to be wrought through the whole range of our lives, like the division long ago at the taking of Jericho, the division between things that could be passed through the fire of consecration into “the treasury of the Lord,” and the things that, unable to “bide the fire,” must be destroyed? All aims, all ambitions, all desires, all pursuits—shall we dare to drop them if they cannot be gathered sharply and clearly into the focus of “this one thing I do”?
huge.. and why to me.. ie: warning ness et al.. for (blank)’s sake
Will it not make life narrow, this focusing? In a sense, it will—just as the mountain path grows narrower, for it matters more and more, the higher we go, where we set our feet—but there is always, as it narrows, a wider and wider outlook and purer, clearer air. Narrow as Christ’s life was narrow, this is our aim; narrow as regards self-seeking, broad as the love of God to all around. Is there anything to fear in that?
to me.. this is small is {ginormous} beautiful ness
no fear ness .. et al
And in the narrowing and focussing, the channel will be prepared for God’s power—like the stream hemmed between the rockbeds, that wells up in a spring—like the burning glass that gathers the rays into an intensity that will kindle fire. It is worth while to let God see what He can do with these lives of ours, when “to live is Christ.”
How do we bring things to a focus in the world of optics? Not by looking at the things to be dropped, but by looking at the one point that is to be brought out.
to me.. this is the cancerous distraction ness of any form of re ness
Turn full your soul’s vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him, *and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him, and the Divine “attrait” by which God’s saints are made, even in this 20th century, will lay hold of you. For “He is worthy” to have **all there is to be had in the heart that He has died to win.“
*let go. of the things you have to cling\ness to.. ie: let go
**aka: already on each heart ness.. no prep.. no train.. just a means to listen deep enough.. ie: non hierarchical listening ness
There is something powerful in our lives when we seek the face of Jesus above all else. God is calling us back to focus upon His face. This is where everything changes. As we decide to turn our eyes upon Jesus today, looking full into His wonderful face, may the things of this world and all that troubles us, grow faintly dim in the light of His glory and grace.
nothing to date has gotten to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
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be you. 