Saturday, November 30, 2019

The need of new lenses


Yet ever so often we feel so alone on this co-creative journey.  The place our deepest knowledge assures us we are not alone.  We can be surprised by the events and challenges of life, God is not.  We have the assurance "That the Lord is my strength and my salvation, so there is nothing for me to fear." "The lord is my Shepherd, so there is nothing I shall need" in this perfectly imperfect world.  Where has the care of your personal Good Shepherd been a reality in your journey so far?  Where does The Good Shepherd appear in the gospel that is being written by your daily actions?  Where are your today's Good Shepherd, Good Samaritan? What is the cost to you?  We are slowly lead to the freedom and courage to be able to pray these two courageous prayers, "God make Your will my will, make my will Your will." "Your will not mine be done. For some of us these prayers are all we can utter in or moments of our sheer desperation. (This awe-full place we can call our, "Calvary Moment," is visited again and again, always leading to a deepening of Easter Joy) The two simple prayers are more than enough for our Higher Power. The desire of our heart is known to God, and that desire will be responded to.

God always sees and responds to our deepest desires but not always in the way we want or expect.  As Shakespeare wrote,:  "There is the rub."  Because of this we constantly have to deal with the sad assumption that when our prayers are not answered the way want them to be answered then either God is not there or I am not liked because of something I have done, or not done.  Both are death dealing assumptions Our God does not hold grudges.  God Who is infinite love does not take offense.  Our Gracious lover does not harbor resentment.  That is the trouble when we see God the way we see, and in so doing we create a death dealing idol.  How much time is wasted in the forced worshipping at the altar of resentment.  We have to be constantly converted.  We are in the constant need of the adjustment to our spiritual lenses.  The lenses of my glasses have to be changed once a year.  I have to approach each new moment of each new day, with a new set lenses.  Yes, this takes work, but be assured the real heavy lifting is being done by a Power greater than ourselves, with a love beyond all our of limited finite ever so human understanding.  It now appears that we are, and ever shall be, be wresting with what those three awe-full words finite, infinite, and infinity.

Our prayer is always  answered.  We just need the time and place to allow God’s answer to filter through to our consciousness.  Here is another paradox in that so-called place of our loneliness The Holy Alone reveals all the hope-full, mercy-full, healing, strengthening love we need. So then that place of loneliness, that place of fear and desperation now becomes the place where the power of solitude, and the need for solitude is revealed.  WE will constantly journey between loneliness and solitude.  Such is our journey "as spiritual beings immersed in the human condition." I am indebted to Henri Nouwen for the wisdom shared in his classic book "Reaching Out."

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