Article October 1, 2012 Issue

Prayer for the heart that rejects God

Mark Swinney

On almost every continent today, acts of violence both specific and random are getting more press than ever. As difficult as it may seem, we can reach out to help those who either have been thinking about the possibility of hurting others or who may already have done so, but are ready to consider ways to bring an end to the violence altogether.

The first step for a person who wants to stop hurting others is to become more aware of his or her directions and patterns of thought. Abuse is a thought before it becomes an act. It’s that angry, selfish, or jealous direction of thinking that, if fueled, can escalate into something hurtful and destructive. On the other hand, more Godlike directions of thinking can peacefully take you on a detour right around that anger and the violence that can go with it. How vital it is to watch the quality of our thoughts! Sometimes your life may feel very conflicted, with the good thoughts and bad thoughts in a battle. Have you ever noticed that the thoughts that win are always ones that you fuel by dwelling on them the most?

You might think of our consciousness as a laboratory in which we have the opportunity to prove and experience the power of God. Each moment, we conduct a new experiment in this laboratory. If we experiment by fueling thoughts that may quickly flare up into an incident of violence, our laboratory work (and overall life) will become fruitless, frustrating, destructive. But we always are the ones making the decisions about which kinds of thoughts to entertain, or fuel. And we can withhold fuel at any time from the thoughts that deserve dismissal.

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