Even More Recovery Readings and Meditations - June

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June 14

Step by Step

Today, I can't dismiss my yesterdays of regrets and misconduct completely even though the program suggests we live only for today. It doesn't compel us to ignore our pasts as if they never occurred. While I will not live those days again, I also cannot discard the lessons they have and which might make today better by not repeating them. Maybe somewhere in the midst of all the damage and regret of yesterday there was also something good that can be carried into today, and my misconduct of yesterday can be a warning not to repeat it. Today, I will live for now. But my present - maybe my future, if there is one - might be disciplined if I accept and learn from the hard-edged lessons of yesterday. And our common journey continues. Step by step. - Chris M.

*****

Easy Does It

Truth

Great is truth. Fire cannot burn it nor water drown it. --Dumas

The importance of truth is stressed often during our 12 Step discussions. Truth is the foundation of all knowledge. It is the standard by which our actions are judged. Truth can never be bought. There is no "happy medium" in truth. All things must be either true or false.
Unless an activity begins with truth, it will be impossible to progress successfully. The advice "truth or silence" warns us of the possible harm from hurriedly made statements. Love and kindness must accompany truth even if we, as the giver or receiver, are pained by the truth. Our Program teaches us that truth can do no more than present things as they really exist.

For me to work my Program successfully, I must always work from a foundation of truth.

*****

The Eye Opener

By the grace of God, we alcoholics have acquired certain characteristics that have made us beneficial to the earth. We have become, in fact, the salt of the earth.

If, however, we hoard our savour to ourselves and fail to recognize our responsibility to distribute it to those portions of the earth that need it, then have we indeed lost our savour and it is good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden underfoot of men.

Nothing is a blessing unless we put it to some constructive use. The wealth of the world is useless to a starving man on an uninhabited and barren island.

*****

Around The Year with Emmet Fox

Common-sense vocabulary

When you apply a certain word to God, it must bear the same essential meaning as it does when you apply it to man---otherwise it has no meaning at all. When you say that God is Love or intelligence, or that He is just, these words must mean substantially what they mean when applied to human beings. The love of God must be essentially the same thing that we know as the love of the mother for her children, or the love of the artist for his creation, putified and increased to infinity, of course.

Many people say that God is Love, and at the same time maintain that He visits finite sin with eternal punishment. They claim that God is just, and yet maintain that people living today are suffering disabilities for a sin supposed to have been committed by Adam thousands of years before they were born.

The truth is that God is Love and Intelligence; and that He works with perfect wisdom and perfect justice to all, at all times, in the ordinary and correct meaning of these words.

….God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:15).

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is Love (1 John 4:8).

Good and upright is the Lord… (Psalm 25:8).