2 Corinthians 12:20 · World English Bible
For I am afraid that by any means, when I come, I might find you not the way I want to, and that I might be found by you as you don’t desire, that by any means there would be strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, whisperings, proud thoughts, or riots,
A teacher dreads coming home to find the household turned on itself. He names the whole brood: rivalry, hot tempers, cliques, corner-muttering, and the proud thoughts underneath.
From the Sufism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SUFISM
A teacher dreads coming home to find the household turned on itself. He names the whole brood: rivalry, hot tempers, cliques, corner-muttering, and the proud thoughts underneath. Each is a different rust, but they cloud the same mirror, and a clouded heart reflects nothing true.
The work is to scrub each stain with its own soap, envy with contentment, anger with patience, gossip with a closed mouth, and to do it now. God is present in that very dread, a love that fears for people and wants them clean, which is why the letter comes before the visit.
Sufism lens
Which stain in me did I plan to deal with later, and what would it take to start tonight?
Ill will is not ended by more ill will but by its opposite, so each stain gets its own cure rather than more of itself. The medicine has to be the thing the sickness is not.
He tells himself that people who do wrong are still kin and that anger at them harms him more than their fault does. The clean mirror matters more than winning the quarrel.
Who can wait quietly while the mud settles? Still water clears itself, so the first cure for a stirred-up heart is to stop stirring it.
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Sufism