She gave an example of how attention magnifies something. Imagine a jealous person who spends time going over and over the imaginings of his mind until he is so enraged that he takes ugly action.
Emma says: Faith in Goodness will feed itself and increase itself in the same way, till we rise and work miracles by reason of it... mind is as free as it has the courage to deny... mind is as great as it has the courage to affirm... mind will certainly demonstrate as much greatness as it has courage to stand by its intention... In all great lives you will see that it was what they did when some storm of adversity struck them which made their characters count... We do not know the value of our high principles and laws until we test them in trial... Nothing is sure at all in your life until it has been put through the furnace, which is the meeting of the opposite to it with its noble steadfastness to itself."There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding," said Job. I have been paying attention to Job of late since it seems to me I have been going through a version of the Job experience. My faith is my anchor in these rough times.
In my values program, I have paired the values and we are somewhere between them, moving towards and away. There are 40 sets, and one of them is faith and fear.The opposite of faith is fear. That is, I have faith in what I don't want. Either way you use it, faith works powerfully. We are somewhere dancing between Faith in God, in Goodness and Fear, faith in shadows.
Faith or fear - to exist in our lives need to be fed by our attention, our emotions, our time. We need to pull ourselves up and fill our lives with God, God's Goodness, uplift ourselves with devotional times, times of service to others, times overflowing with Good. We need to banish from our thinking the dark shadows of fear and refuse to let them take precious moments of our time on earth. Be gone old fears, God is here so there is nothing to fear.
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