Latest / Sober Readings / A New Direction
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Sunday, july fifth. Let's begin with the Serenity Prayer. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections A New Direction. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient. They failed utterly. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all our activities. That's from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Pages forty five and eighty five. I hear talk of the weak-willed alcoholic, but I am one of the strongest willed people on earth. I now know that my incredible strength of will is not enough to save my life. My problem is not one of weakness, but rather of direction. When I, without falsely diminishing myself, accept my honest limitations and turn to God's guidance, my worst faults become my greatest assets. My strong will, rightly directed, is keeps me working until the promises of the program become my daily reality. Today's reading from twenty four hours july five AA thought for the day. Until we came into AA, most of us had tried desperately to stop drinking. We were filled with the delusion that we could drink like our friends. We tried time and again to take it or leave it, but we could do neither. We always lapsed into ceaseless, unhappy drinking. Families, friends, and employers threw up their hands in hurt bewilderment, in despair, and finally in disgust. We wanted to stop. We realized that every reason for drinking was only a crazy excuse. Have I given up every excuse for drinking? The meditation for the day. Many things can upset you, and you can easily get off the track. But remember that God is near you all the time, ready to help you if you call on him. You cannot forever stand against God's will for you, nor can you forever upset God's plan for your life, even though God's plan may be postponed by your willfulness and deliberate choice of evil. A whole world of men and women cannot permanently change God's laws nor His purpose for the universe. The sea of life may look very rough to us, but we can believe that our captain steers the boat on a straight course. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may try to steer a straight course. I pray that I may accept God's direction in my life's journey. Today's daily meditation from Touchstone. We shall describe conditions of the soul that words can only hint at. We shall have to use logic to try to corner perspectives that laugh at our attempt. That's a quote from Huston Smith. As we live the spiritual life, we find that words and logic are only capable of pointing in the direction of some truths. Words do not contain the entire truth our experience may be teaching us. This is like the difference between hearing about fishing versus actually being on the water, smelling the misty air, and feeling the fish tug on our line. Spiritual development is a form of education. We are developing the part of us that learns by experience, that has a feeling without exactly knowing why, that understands stories better than statistics. Gradually we accept more experiences in our lives as mysteries, as not fitting into any specific categories. Many experiences will have more meaning than cold facts could ever express. As this side of us develops, we don't discard reason and judgment, we become deeper human beings. Today I will give my intuition more freedom. That will help my spiritual self grow. And finally today a reading from As Bill Sees It. Today we're going to read from page three zero nine. Spiritual axiom. It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong too. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about justifiable anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? And shouldn't we be properly angry with self righteous folks? For us of AA, these adventures in anger are sometimes very dangerous. We have found that even justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it. That's from the twelve and twelve page ninety. And that's it for today's readings. If you have any comments or thoughts on today's readings that you'd like to share with me, you can send me an email at soberreadingswithscotgmail.com. And also if you'd like to be a guest reader on sober readings, just send me an email at that same email address, soberreadingswithsc at gmail.com, and we can make that happen. If you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today, just go to my website, soberreadings.com, and click the donate button. So thank you so much for listening today. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other, and remember just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.