Introspection: Glimpses of God

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Glimpses of God

Heaven is declaring God's glory;

the sky is proclaiming His handiwork.

One day gushes the news to the next,

and one night informs another what needs to be known.

Of course, there's no speech, no words -

their voices can't be heard -

but their sound extends throughout the world;

their words reach the ends of the earth.

Psalm 19:1-4a (CEB)

I forgot that I might see

So many beautiful things

I forgot that I might need

To find out what life could bring

From "Beautiful Things" by Andain

A few months ago, I came to the realization that I've grown cynical.  If one wanted to use religious language, one might say that I was "convicted" of it.  Over time, I have lost a lot of faith - not faith in God, but rather faith in people.  In the past couple of years, I've borne witness to things that have deeply disappointed me, shaken my faith in humanity, and made it more difficult for me to trust people, religious people included.

One thing that has come back to me over and over again in the past few months - in my personal Bible studies and in preparing for a sermon and a Sunday school lesson - is the Biblical idea that, when God created humanity, God ordained humanity to be the custodians of creation.¹  Furthermore, I've learned that, in spite of the fact that, as a species, we've spent thousands of years giving God reasons to be disappointed in us, God has never abandoned the original plan for us to the caretakers of creation.²

I might have lost faith in people, but it seems as though God still has a lot of faith in humanity.  If, in my cynicism, I have somehow become "wiser" than God in this matter, then perhaps some "foolishness" would be good for me.

---

As a state employee, I was able to take a break from work during the week of the Fourth of July.  On Wednesday of that week, I had the opportunity to enjoy a late breakfast with my mother and my grandmother at Waffle House.  At the booth next to ours, sat a mother with her children.  As they got up to leave, one of the children, a little girl, for no apparent reason, walked over to where I was sitting and gave me a hug.  It did not matter to her that she had never seen me before that day, nor did it matter to her that I had a different color of skin than she had.

The very next day, I attended a funeral service for a friend who died suddenly.  I met her and her husband in a small group a number of years ago, and I had the opportunity to reconnect with both of them not long ago.  In the middle of the service, the soloist, another man I had met in the same small group, sang "On Eagles' Wings."  Toward the end of the song he got choked up and started to cry, and he could not finish the song.  Then something amazing happened: when the soloist would have sung the chorus of the song for the last time, the congregation, without being asked, sang the chorus for him.

---

One of my coworkers loves to hike.  She once told me that whenever she goes hiking, she finds herself awestruck by the beauty of nature.  She said that, at these times, she finds herself thinking that there must be a God.  Having read a number of the Psalms lately, I think that the poet David must have seen God in the world all around him in the same way that my coworker sees God in nature when she goes hiking.

One night, David looks up at the sky and sees the moon and the stars, and he begins to feel small.  He then remembers how much God loves humanity, and he writes Psalm 8.

When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

the moon and the stars that You have established;

what are human beings that You are mindful of them,

mortals that You care for them?³

One day, David witnesses a great thunderstorm.  He is reminded of the awesome power of God and writes Psalm 29.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;

the God of glory thunders,

the LORD, over mighty waters.

The voice of the LORD is powerful;

the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.⁴

---

I believe that I somehow saw God in the two events I described from the week of the Fourth.  When the little girl hugged me, I believe I caught a glimpse of the unconditional love of God.  I believe I saw what Jesus meant when He said that the Kingdom of God belongs to the childlike.⁵  When I heard the congregation at the funeral finish the song for the soloist, I believe I caught a glimpse of what it means to be the Kingdom of God and the Body of Christ.  I once heard that the Church is the community that will sing for you when you are unable to sing, pray for you when you are unable to pray, and believe for you when you are unable to believe.⁶  The church is the group of friends who carry you to Christ on a stretcher when you cannot approach Christ on your own.⁷

These two events broke through my cynicism, and they inspired me to look for God in the world around me.  Since that time, I have treasured up a number of glimpses of God.

A few weeks ago, I was having a rough day at work.  Though I normally take my lunch to work and eat at my desk, I was compelled to go out for lunch.  I just had to get out of the office for a while.  I went to a restaurant down the street for what I like to call "chili dog therapy."  At the restaurant, I saw two ladies from a church where I have preached several times.  After I placed my order, I walked over to them to say hello, and one of the ladies slid over in the booth so that I could sit with them.  We talked about their church for a while, and they said some encouraging things to me about my preaching.  After lunch, I felt much better than I did before I left the office.  Maybe it was just a lucky coincidence that I ran into these two ladies while I was having a bad day, but I cannot help but feel as though God was somehow at work.

Last month, I was walking around the local shopping mall, and I saw a tattooed, pink-haired woman bottle feeding her baby at the children's play area.  I believe that motherhood, like all forms of self-giving love, is a picture of God's love.  Furthermore, I believe that all of us human beings bear the image of God, no matter how "interesting" we might look because of our tattoos, piercings, or hairstyle choices.

Last month, I spoke at another of my home church's sister congregations.  Not long ago, this church was on the brink of closing its doors, but now the church is experiencing a revitalization because of people who are willing to dream "God-sized dreams."  It is difficult to not see God at work in this church.

My mom has three birds - a parrotlet and two parakeets.  One day, I watched as the parrotlet chewed up a strip of paper my mom had placed in her cage.  I thought it was comical that she was actually holding the piece of paper with her foot as she tore it up.  Normally we only see birds for an instant as they fly through our field of vision, but when we actually have the chance to watch birds for an extended period of time, we can see that our Creator pays a lot of attention to detail, giving each and every bird a personality of her own.

I also see God in my mom's love for her birds.  Adam Hamilton recently said that a person's care for animals is a picture of God's care for all of creation.⁸

One evening, as I sat in a coffee shop, feeling sad, I caught a glimpse of the glory of God as I saw the beautiful colors of the sunset through the drive thru window.

I have also seen God in smiles, hello's, and small acts of kindness from complete strangers, in walking and talking with friends, in expectant mothers, in fathers and sons walking hand in hand, in families' asking for a blessing upon their meal, in acts of hospitality, and in a pleasantly cool summer evenings.

You might be tempted to say to me, "All you're really doing is describing the beauty you've seen in the world."

I would be tempted to reply, "What's your point?"

---

The television show Joan of Arcadia made its debut in the fall of 2003.  In this drama, a teenaged girl named Joan sees God.  She might see God as a teenaged boy, a woman working in the school cafeteria, a man walking dogs, a librarian, a little girl, a gothic youth, a clerk at a convenience store, or any number of other people.  On every episode, God asks Joan to do something that, at first, seems utterly ridiculous to her, but, by doing what God asks her to do, she helps people in ways she could not anticipate.  On the pilot episode, Joan makes a comment about God's appearing to her, to which God responds, "I'm not appearing to you: you are seeing Me."  I always thought this statement was profound.

One day, St. Paul was walking through the city of Athens.  Amid a plethora of altars dedicated to various deities, Paul spots an altar dedicated "To an unknown god."  Paul then tells the people of Athens about the unknown God who created the universe, the God who "does not live in shrines made by human hands" but "is not far from each one of us," the God in whom "we live and move and have our being."⁹  The psalmist David asks, "Where can I go from Your Spirit?  Or where can I flee from Your presence?"¹⁰  I once heard Rob Bell say, "We live... in a world drenched in God."¹¹  We can catch glimpses of this God all around us if we are just willing to open our eyes.

Looking for God in the world around me, particularly in other people, has made me hope that other people can somehow see God in me, even if only in a small way.  Until recently, I never really understood what it meant for people to glorify God.  Now I realize that human beings, all of whom bear the image of their Creator, can, by their misdeeds, make God look bad by association.  By contrast, people glorify God when they do the very things God created them to do.  When we see masses of volunteers coming together to help people after natural disasters, we want to praise God.  On the other hand, when we look back at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Auschwitz, we start to wonder if there even is a God.  Is it merely a coincidence that "death of God" theology became popular in the decades following World War II?

Cynicism is, at its worst, a disease that blinds us to any goodness in the world.  I have come to believe that, if we want to be cured of cynicism, we must open our eyes to the beauty of God all around us.  Albert Einstein supposedly said, "There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is."¹²  Similarly, theologian Karl Rahner once stated that there will come a time when one must either become a mystic - one who experiences God - or become an atheist.¹³  I have rejected both cynicism and atheism, so I choose to see the goodness of God in the world around me.  I hope that you, the reader, will make the same choice.


Notes:

1. See Genesis 1:26, Genesis 2:15, and Psalm 8:5-6.
2. See Romans 8:19-21.
3. Psalm 8:3-4 (NRSV)
4. Psalm 29:3-4 (NRSV)
5. Luke 18:16
6. Steve Argue.  "A Spiritually-Shaped Life."  Mars Hill Bible Church Podcast, 02/27/2011.
7. See Mark 2:1-12.
8. Adam Hamilton.  "The Ark, the Animals and the Floodwaters."  The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection podcast, 05/11/2014.
9. Acts 17:22-28 (NRSV)
10. Psalm 139:7 (NRSV)
11. Rob Bell.  NOOMA Trees | 003.  2002, Flannel.
12. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Disputed
13. http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/47417.Karl_Rahner

The photograph featured in this introspection is public domain.

Perspective: A Theology of Abundance

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

A Theology of Abundance

From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.

Luke 12:48 (NRSV)

I can hear the least of these

Cryin' out so desperately

And I know we are the hands and feet

Of You, oh God

So if You say move

It's time for me to follow through

And do what I was made to do

And show them who You are

From "I Refuse" by Josh Wilson

Every day, for the last two months, I've been reading a passage from the daily lectionary.¹  I can say that it has been an edifying practice for me, for it has given me exposure to numerous unfamiliar parts of Scripture and has made me think about many different topics.  A few weeks ago, I came across the following passage from Psalm 65:

You visit the earth and water it,

You greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water;

You provide the people with grain,

for so You have prepared it.

You water its furrows abundantly,

settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

and blessing its growth.

You crown the year with your bounty;

Your wagon tracks overflow with richness.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy.²

In this passage, I see abundance.  The psalmist imagines God moving through the earth, leaving an abundance of blessings in God's path: abundant water, abundant rain, abundant livestock, and abundant grain.

The phrase that came to my mind after reading this passage was theology of abundance.  I don't know how this term has been used in the past, but, when I refer to a theology of abundance, I am not referring to a theology of prosperity, the idea that God rewards faithful people with material success.  Rather, I refer to abundance as opposed to scarcity.  The theology of abundance I want to explore is the idea that God has so richly and abundantly blessed the earth that there is more than enough for every person on the planet to have what he or she needs.

When exploring a theology of abundance, is there any better Bible story to tell than the story of Jesus' feeding the multitude?

One day, a massive crowd of thousands of people follow Jesus and the Disciples to a secluded place.  As always, Jesus has compassion on the crowd, teaches them about the Kingdom of God, and ministers to those in the crowd who are sick.  As evening falls, Jesus and the Disciples become concerned that the people are getting hungry, especially since they are far from any marketplace.  Jesus tells the Disciples to feed the crowd, but the Disciples can only scrounge up five loaves of bread and two fish.  Jesus begins to break up the bread and fish and distribute the pieces to the people, and, somehow everybody has enough to eat until they are full.  The Disciples gather up the leftovers and somehow fill up five baskets.³

The story of this miracle can be found all four Gospels, and each Gospel writer brings a unique perspective to the event.  St. John, in his version of the story, points out that it is a young boy who brings the loaves and the fish to the Disciples.  If you think about it, this is something only a stupid kid would do.  A responsible adult would have held on to the food, realizing that, in a situation of scarcity, one needs to provide for one's family and oneself before helping other people.⁴  I wonder if maybe, somewhere between Bible verses, the boy hears the Disciples talking with Jesus about how they are going to feed everybody and then yells out, to his parents' chagrin, "We have some food!"

This story shows the difference between a mindset of scarcity and a mindset of abundance.  People often refer to this story as the "Feeding of the Five Thousand," but, according to three of the Gospel writers, there were five thousand men present.  If every man present had a wife and if every couple had at least two children, then there would have been an excess of 20,000 people present - I imagine that this is a rather conservative estimate.  According to St. Mark and St. John, the Disciples do the math and figure that it would require at least six month's wages to buy enough bread for everybody in the crowd to have a few bites.

Where others see scarcity, Jesus sees abundance.  Somehow He turns the boy's sack lunch into a feast that nourishes and fills tens of thousands of people, and somehow He manages to leave twelve baskets of leftovers.  A theology of abundance does not work very well if we are so stuck in a mindset of scarcity that we cannot see the abundant blessings of God all around us, nor does it work if we selfishly hoard or stockpile resources.  A theology of abundance only works if people who have are willing to share with people who are without - just like the boy who shared his food.

Now I want you, the reader, to think about three numbers.

The first number is 21,000.  According to studies by the United Nations, every day, 21,000 people in the world die because of hunger.⁵

The second number is 2700.  According to a 1996 estimate by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there is enough food produced in the world for every person on the planet to consume 2700 calories per day.⁶  The calculations on the nutrition information labels on the packages of food we buy are based on a diet of 2000 calories per day.  Despite the death count, there is more than enough food to go around.

The third number is 40.  According to studies by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40% of the food produced in the United States is thrown away.⁷

Some people in the world do not have access to the food they need to survive.  Other people in the world buy more food than they are able to eat.  Something is wrong with this picture.

In our individualistic society we don't like to hear that we have a responsibility to anybody but ourselves and our families, but, whether we like it or not, we have a responsibility to the hungry people of the world.  According to the creation stories at the beginning of the Bible, humanity was created to be the caretakers of God's good creation.⁸  As the stewards of the world and its resources, it is our responsibility to make sure that people have access to the food they need.

There are numerous organizations that are dedicated to fighting poverty, one of which is Stop Hunger Now.  Stop Hunger Now combats world hunger through its meal packaging program.  At packaging events, hundreds of volunteers gather to assemble non-perishable meal packages of rice, soy, dried vegetables, and nutrient packets.  At a single packaging event, volunteers might package as many as one million meals.  These meals are shipped out to impoverished areas in the world.  Many of these meals are sent to schools, so that parents have an incentive to send their children to school.  At these school, children get the nourishment they need, and they also gain the education they need to break the cycle of poverty.⁹

Of course, you do not need to travel halfway across the world to find areas of poverty.  There are hungry people in your midst, even if you live in an industrialized nation.  Local soup kitchens and food banks are always in need of your help.  I hope that you, the reader, will consider how you can help to fight hunger and poverty, in your own neck of the woods and on the other side of the world.  I pray that we always remember the abundance of blessings God has lavished upon the world, and I pray that we never forget about the people in the world who are in need.


Notes:

1. The daily lectionary can be found in .pdf format here.
2. Psalm 65:9-13 (NRSV)
3. See Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-14.
4. I hope you realize I'm speaking tongue-in-cheek here.
5. http://www.poverty.com/
6. http://www.economist.com/node/18200702/
7. http://www.nrdc.org/food/wasted-food.asp
8. Genesis 1-2
9. http://www.stophungernow.org/mission-history/

The photograph featured in this perspective was taken by Larisa Koshkina.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Introspection: Wrestling with God's Will

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Wrestling with God's Will

"With what shall I come before the LORD,

and bow myself before God on high?"

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:6a,8 (NRSV)

I am not skilled to understand

What God hath willed, what God hath planned

I only know at His right hand

Stands One who is my Savior

From "I Am Not Skilled to Understand" by Dora Greenwell

When I want to go out and do something but have nothing to go out and do, I sometimes end up at a bookstore, and, while I'm there, I usually end up browsing the religion section.  One evening, I noticed that there are a lot of books about discerning God's will for a person's life, and I began to wonder why there are so many books about the subject.  If someone actually figured out how to discern God's will and was kind enough to write a book about it, then wouldn't any other would-be writers on the subject just refer people to the first person's book?

The subject of God's will is something with which I have been wrestling for a couple of years now.

St. Paul once wrote, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose."¹  Some people take this statement to mean that, as the old cliché goes, "everything happens for a reason."  Some people believe that everything that happens in this world happens for some divine purpose.  Some people even believe that God ordains all things that happen in the world as part of some greater plan.

A little over two years ago, someone I once deeply admired and respected asked me to consider making a certain choice in life.  This person told me a lot of things to convince me that this was the right choice for me to make.  She even went so far as to imply that God had prompted her to make this request of me.  At the time, I felt as though she was in a position to say such things because she struck me as a wise person and maybe even a mystic.  To make matters even more complicated, this request could have been interpreted as an answer to prayer, but it was not the answer I was expecting.  These things led me to believe that maybe it was indeed God's will for me to make this particular life choice, but it was not really a choice I wanted to make.

Months later, this person proved herself to be a hypocrite who had absolutely no business saying what she had said to me.  I was angry - I felt as though I had been manipulated by a person with an agenda.  I ultimately said "no" to her request.  I felt justified at first - in fact, I felt that her hypocrisy got me off the hook - but eventually I sank into depression and self-loathing.  I felt horrible for months afterward, because I felt as though I was not only saying "no" to my former friend, but also saying "no" to God.  I felt as though I had failed people who were important to me, and I felt as though I had failed God and rebelled against God's will.

Yet I had no intention of repenting and saying "yes."

---

One dark night, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives to pray.  He knew that He had drawn the ire of the powers that be and that he would soon face the consequences of his recent acts of protest against them.  Nobody says and does the type of things Jesus had said and done that week without facing resistance from somebody who has something to lose.  The Bible says that He was so full of anguish that night that His sweat was like blood.  Jesus prayed, "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet, not My will but Yours be done."²

We all know what happened next.  Not long after He prayed, He was apprehended by an angry mob and abandoned by those who were closest to Him.  Hours later, He was taken before the Roman governor, brutally beaten, and executed on a cross.

Jesus foresaw the metaphorical cup that would inevitably be set before Him, a cup full of pain and suffering.  He prayed that God would deliver Him from it, yet He also prayed that God's will would be done.  That said, was it really God's will for Jesus to suffer and die such a horrible death?

Furthermore, does surrendering to God's will always require a person to drink the cup set before him?

---

In my opinion, one of the most fascinating figures in the Bible is a man named Jacob.  When Jacob's twin brother Esau was born, Jacob came out of the womb immediately afterward because he was clutching Esau's heel.  This would prove to be a motif throughout their lives.  Esau grew up to become a macho hunter; Jacob, on the other hand, was more of a mama's boy.  Esau, as the oldest son as well as his father's favorite, was entitled to receive a double share of the inheritance along with a special blessing.  Jacob, the runner-up, would receive significantly less than his brother.  That was the cup set in front of Jacob - that was his lot in life.  That was just the way things worked in those days.

Jacob refused to settle for second-best, so he became a man who would "wrestle" his way through life.  Once, when Esau returned home famished after a hunting expedition, Jacob refused to feed him until he surrendered his birthright to him.  Later on, when the time came for Esau to receive the special blessing promised to him, Jacob disguised himself as Esau and tricked their nearsighted father into giving him the blessing instead.  Jacob effectively took the cup set in front of him and switched it with his brother's.  Esau, sick and tired of being screwed over by his brother, made up his mind to kill him as soon as their father passed away.  Jacob fled to his mother's homeland and began another proverbial wrestling match with Laban, the man who would become his father-in-law.³

The story of Jacob's life reaches it's climax one dark night while Jacob is on his way back to his homeland to face the brother he mistreated years earlier.  Distressed, he sends his family across the river, intending to spend the night by himself, but he ends up spending the night wrestling with... well... someone.  The stranger knocks Jacob's hip out of joint and demands that Jacob let him go.  Jacob replies, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me."  The stranger tells him, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed."  Limping, Jacob looks back on the event and says, "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved."⁴

I get the sense that, in modern Christianity, people think that one should accept one's lot in life gratefully and contentedly because it is God's will.  After all, "everything happens for a reason," right?  Last year, as I wrestled with God's will for my life, I was drawn to the story of Jacob's wrestling with God - I even wrote a sermon about it.  I know that some people would be quick to tell me that Jacob did a lot of underhanded things, that "wrestling with God" is not really a good thing to do, and that a limp from God is not a blessing to be desired.  Still, I cannot help but admire Jacob because he refused to accept what had been handed to him in life and fought for something better.  Jacob had "striven with with God and with humans," and it seems as though he was commended for it by his mysterious sparring partner.

Of course, it is important to remember that there are two sides to every story.  Jacob fought for a better life for himself, but he did so at his brother's expense.  Life played a cruel joke on Esau: everything he had been promised his entire life was treacherously taken away from him.  In a moment of weakness, his birthright was extorted from him, and the great blessing he had been promised was given to someone else.  When Jacob stole the promised blessing, Esau received another blessing that could only be described as "the shaft."⁵  Though I like that Jacob fought for a better life for himself, I do not like that he walked all over his own brother to get what he wanted out of life.

---

Does God really have a plan for each and every person's life?  Is this really what it means to speak of God's will?  I wonder if maybe we've all been driving ourselves nuts by overthinking the concept of God's will.  Adam Hamilton, in his book Why?, suggests that maybe "God's will is more about how we make our decisions than about the specific decisions we make."  He goes on to describe God's Prescriptive Will as "the instruction God has given us that will lead to greater spiritual and relational health."⁶

A religious scholar who wanted to challenge Jesus once asked Him which commandment in the Jewish Law is the most important.  Jesus replied, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"  Jesus then said, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."  In other words, anything God ever commanded the Jewish people to do, through their religious code or through the words of the prophets, was ultimately rooted in love for God and love for other people.⁷

What if that's all there is to it?

What if God's will has been a secret hidden in plain sight this whole time?

What if God does not necessarily have our lives mapped out for us?

What if God's will is simply that we love God and love each other?

---

Let's return to the Mount of Olives.

When Jesus prayed, "Not My will but Yours be done," what was He saying?  Was He saying to God, "Whatever You want to happen to me, let it happen"?  Or, if God's will is simply that we all love God and love one another, was Jesus perhaps saying, "I have made up My mind to make the most loving decision I can possibly make, even if it costs Me My life"?

John Ortberg, in his book Who Is This Man?, points out that surrendering to the mob was not Jesus' only option.  Jesus could have led a revolt against the Romans and the corrupt religious establishment, fled into the wilderness, or struck a deal with the religious leaders or with the Roman governor.  As the Son of God, He could have even summoned legions of angels to help Him.  Ortberg argues that Jesus did none of these things because He realized that if He didn't surrender to the mob, somebody else would have died.  Theology aside, Jesus died to save people's lives.⁸

If God's will is simply that we love, then sometimes surrendering to God's will requires us to accept our circumstances and drink the cup set in front of us, but that is not always the case.  Jacob was not wrong to fight for a better life, but he failed to love his brother as he loved himself.  If Jacob did not want to drink the cup set in front of him, he should not have forced his brother to drink it for him.  If anything, Jacob should have fought for equality with his brother.

I will not deny that God sometimes calls people to make certain choices in life.  I have a number of friends who feel as though God had called them to make certain career choices, and they experienced a sense of unrest until they made the choice to follow that calling.  Frederick Buechner once mused, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."  If you love what you do but aren't making the world a better place, then you haven't found your calling.  If you have invested yourself in a worthy cause but hate your life, then you still haven't found your calling.⁹  For any individual, there will be certain ways of loving God and loving others are better suited for her than other ways.

A few months ago, I wrote that I was experiencing cognitive dissonance over some of my actions in the past couple of years.  Regarding this one particular life choice, I have finally found a sense of peace.  I cannot say that I acted in the most loving way possible - in fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't.  What I can say is that if I had done what my former friend asked me to do, then I could have ended up doing a lot more harm than good, especially if my heart wasn't in it.  I think that maybe her own personal failure is proof of that.

If you, the reader, are wrestling with God's will for your life right now, I hope that I have given you some things to consider.  I do not, by any means, claim to be an expert on the subject of God's will.  I don't even think that the authors who write about the subject can truly make such a claim.  Each person must wrestle with God's will for his or her own life.

At least I didn't make you buy a book to read my thoughts on the subject.


Notes:

1. Romans 8:28 (NRSV)
2. Luke 22:39-44 (NRSV)
3. Genesis 25-31
4. Genesis 32:22-31 (NRSV)
5. Genesis 27:39-40
6. Adam Hamilton.  Why?: Making Sense of God's Will.  2011, Abingdon Press.  ch. 3
7. Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV).  This passage was also cited by Hamilton in Why?.
8. John Ortberg.  Who Is This Man?: the Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus.  2012, Zondervan.  pp. 171-173
9. Frederick Buechner.  Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC.  1993, HarperOne.  p. 118-119

The photograph featured in this introspection was taken by Reinhard Dietrich and is public domain.