Latest / Sober Readings / A Measure Of Humility
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Thursday, the sixteenth of July. Let's begin today with the Serenity Pray. Use the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections: A Measure of Humility. In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain. And that's from page 75 of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. It was painful to give up trying to control my life, even though success eluded me, and when life got too rough, I drank to escape. Accepting life on life's terms will be mastered through the humility I experience when I turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him. With my life in God's care, fear, uncertainty, and anger are no longer my response to those portions of life that I would rather not have happened to me. The pain of living through these times will be healed by the knowledge that I have received the spiritual strength to survive. Today's reading from twenty four hours, july sixteenth, AA thought for the day. We can believe that God is in his heaven and that he has a purpose for our lives, which will eventually work out as long as we try to live the way we believe he wants us to live. It has been said that we should wear the world like a loose garment. That means that nothing should seriously upset us because we have a deep abiding faith that God will always take care of us. To us, that means not to be too upset by the surface wrongness of things. but to feel deeply secure in the fundamental goodness and purpose in the universe. Do I feel deeply secure? The meditation for the day. Like the shadow of a great rock in a desert land, God is your refuge from the ills of life. The old hymn says, Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. God can be your shelter from the storm. God's power can protect you from every temptation and defeat. Try to feel His divine power. Call on it, accept it, and use it. Armed with that power, you can face anything. Each day seek safety in God's secret place in communion with Him. You cannot be wholly touched or seriously harmed there. God can be your refuge. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may find a haven in the thought of God. I pray that I may abide in that strong tower strongly guarded. Today's daily meditation from Touchstones. Do not seek death. Death will find you. That's a quote from Dag Hammerskull. When we accept deep within ourselves the fact that we will die, that our days are numbered as certainly as those of each thriving, bustling generation before us, then we become more fully alive and vital men. Facing this raises grief over our loss, and we wish to avoid it. Yet death keeps us honest. It highlights the folly of our questions about whether we should live or die. And confronts us with the self-destructive behaviors we have used. Some of us have nearly killed ourselves by our extreme behaviors. Since death is certain, the real question is: how shall we live? By pursuing recovery and spiritual growth, we have chosen to live more fully and to use our energies well. We live with commitment to our highest values. We stay in tune with our inner voice to help us make choices. We play, we love, and we celebrate the miracle of life every day, not because there is no grief, but because life is precious and time is limited. Today I will accept my grief over the limits of life. I will celebrate its wonder. And for today's final reading, we're gonna go to As Bill Sees It, page 315, Greater Than Ourselves. If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the power needed for change wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient. They failed utterly. Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. And that's from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 44 and 45. And for today's final reading, I'm gonna go to the big book and follow up on that last reading from As Bill Sees It. So let's go to page forty-five. From the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's chapter four, it's We Agnostics, and we'll pick up right where that left off in as Bill sees it. Well, that's exactly what this book is all about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself, which will solve your problem. That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral, and it means, of course, that we are going to talk about God. Here, difficulty arises with agnostics. Many times we talk to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship. But his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God, for we have reopened a subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored. We know how he feels. We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been violently anti religious. To others the word God brought up a particular idea of him with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood. Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection, we imagined we had abandoned the God idea entirely. We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, even cowardly. We looked upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems, and inexplicable calamity, with deep skepticism. We looked asconce at many individuals who claimed to be godly. How could a supreme being have anything to do with it all? And who could comprehend a supreme being anyhow? Yet in other moments we found ourselves thinking, when enchanted by a starlit night, who then made all this? There was a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost. Yes, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experiences. Let us make haste to reassure you. We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power. Which is God. Much to our relief, we discovered we did not need to consider another's conception of God. Our own conception, however inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to effect a contact with Him. As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe, underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction. Provided we took other simple steps. We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the realm of spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. And I'll stop right there for today. Page 46 reminds us that we do not need to have a perfect understanding of God. Or accept someone else's definition of a higher power, to begin developing faith. We are invited to form our own conception of a power greater than ourselves. What matters is not having all the answers, but becoming willing to believe that something beyond our own limited thinking may be able to help us. The page ends by saying, It is open, we believe to all men. Of course, the big book was written in the language of its time. Today when we hear the word men, In that sentence, we understand it to include women and really everyone. This spiritual path is not reserved for one gender, one religion, or one particular kind of person. The door is open to anyone willing to step through it. And so I hope you enjoyed that short reading from chapter four We Agnostics from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you'd like me to read more passages out of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, send me an email, let me know. Soberreadings with Scott at gmail.com or just simply comment down below. And also if you enjoyed the show, please click the like button and subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, just go to my website, soberreadings.com, and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll catch 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, keep coming back. Have a great day, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.