I Was Just Thinking THE ELEVATED LIFE
	MAY 2005

by Don Huntington, Editor In Chief

It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the TV and treat life as if it goes on forever. (Philip Adams)

For years I’ve had a steadily developing sense of the “vast potential” that Philip Adams speaks about. Someone said that with only 20 minutes of study a day a person could become an authority on any topic in 20 years. I think the greatest potential for most of us comes from that kind of consistency.

I’ve never had the ability to run very far or very fast, for example. But I realized a few years ago that if I simply ran every day, and each day would run ten paces further than the day before, I would be running six miles every day in less than five years. I wouldn’t have to ever kill myself to accomplish this goal; each day I would only do a little more than I had the day before. All it would require is persistence — a quality of unswerving steadiness!

My larger life requires the same quality of steadiness from me. Even more than being able to do good, I need to be good for the people around me — to be the worker that my partner needs, the father that my children need, the husband that my wife needs, and the man that I myself need me to be. Every day I try to recite again an ancient pledge:

I will be careful to lead a blameless life...
I will walk in my house with blameless heart.
I will set before my eyes no vile thing.

The demands of a moral and ethical life require that every day, from the time I get out of bed until I fall to sleep at night, I strive, with great consistency, to be the man that I’m supposed to be that day. By living this elevated kind of life over a sufficient number of days, I will be able to lay down the basis for a successful life, as Heaven would consider a life to be successful.

Being able to meet the great demands of moral integrity — that are so infinitely more important than being able to jog for six miles — requires of me a level of energy more powerful than mere determination. Nevertheless, I’m finding this kind of life continually easier to live. Every day my soul feels nourished by heavenly manna! Every day my feet seem once again to be planted in a blessed place!

Many of us are inclined either to try to assault heaven in a personal quest to acquire personal significance by our own efforts or, at the other extreme, to live in a false passivity in which we are pushed back and forth by emotions and circumstances beyond our choice or control. However, I was created to be neither a god nor a victim. The Bible says that I’m actually designed to be a household instrument — a vessel that can be filled with the essence of eternity, as clear water might fill a pot.

It took me a long time to get this straight. The basin of my life kept getting filled and choked with the clutter and garbage of a random existence. I could be either somewhat up or way down according to whatever mercies or failures had accidentally slopped into my life that day. From time to time I would open the spigot of goodness a crack — in reading something uplifting, talking with a friend, or watching a sunset. But I often remained closed off from grace, being distracted from joy by the clamorings of schedule, passions, or innate folly.

I’m not perfect yet (sorry!), but my feet are regularly walking down happy and wholesome paths these days. When I realize that destructive thoughts or imaginations are coming into my mind, I give them up to Heaven for destruction. The moment I realize that I have done something inappropriate to the principle of light that is in me, I seek restitution and strive to receive a fresh inflow of forgiveness that just destroys — completely pulverizes — any lingering effects of the darkness.

I’m so grateful that I have the power every day to keep open a heavenly faucet and fill myself full of grace. I understand the words of James Weldon Johnson’s old prayer about coming “like empty pitchers to a full fountain.”

That’s the way I come!

That’s the kind of fountain I keep coming to.