January 5

"All I had enjoyed before was only a peace, a gift of God, but now I received and possessed the God of peace."   Madame Guyon,  July 22, 1680

Madame Guyon felt that abandonment was the key to the spiritual life.  She was a part of the Quietism movement which believed one could be sinless if one withdrew the mind from worldly interests and anxieties and instead contemplated God and his attributes.  Her first error, of course, was in thinking she could be sinless.  However, she also neglected Jesus teaching concerning being in the world but not of it.  Yet, her realization that it was God she was to possess and not just His peace that speaks deeply to me.  I agree that abandonment is key:  What we must abandon, though, is our need to be in control.  We must become as clay so that we can be shaped into vessels for use by God.  This imagery of the potter and the clay fits very nicely with Madame Guyon’s idea of possessing the God of peace as I envision the potter becoming one with his clay and thereby the clay becoming one with his maker.  The abandonment of self is necessary in this sense because we must be pliable, but the abandonment of all the world offers is a different matter.  The things of life are ours to enjoy--they are not given to give us importance as some would think.

“The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.”  John 17:22