When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer… To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.
~Brennan Manning
But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey Your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that You performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, You in Your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. You gave Your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell…. And You gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner. So they took possession of the land of Sihon king of Heshbon and the land of Og king of Bashan. You multiplied their children as the stars of heaven, and You brought them into the land that You had told their fathers to enter and possess. So the descendants went in and possessed the land, and You subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hand, with their kings and the peoples of the land, that they might do with them as they would. And they captured fortified cities and a rich land, and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in Your great goodness.
~ Admonitions to The Precious Possession of G_d, in Nehemiah 9
Oh beloved, it is true. We look to The Son, and then walk away, complaining of the spots in our vision.
He fills us with His goodness, and we complain of want.
He gives us His Love, and we despise our companions.
He pours out forgiveness on us, and we judge our brother.
He cleanses our past, and we dwell on our failures.
He invites us Home, and we run to a far country.
He frees us from the flesh, and we dive back into the pig-pen.
He shows us the path, and we look at the crack in the pavement.
He speaks to us, and we refuse to believe.
He gives us His armour, and we despise its protection.
He shows us His heart, and we flinch at the communion.
What is it with us? Why is it that we are nearly drowning in His goodness and yet we are trying to feel so dry and alone? The dead man of our flesh seems to have a voice. And we seem so ready to listen to it.
Actually, it is no mystery. And thankfully, there is no escape from the solution. Him, and the enormous goodness of
Who He is,
What He does,
When He comes,
Where He goes,
Why He freed us,
How He Loves us.
We are saved. And we are not just saved from something. We are saved towards SomeOne. And the One into whose presence we are being saved is already everywhere. His presence pervades all of creation. There is nowhere we can go to get away from it… Even when we try.
While, as C.S. Lewis called Him, “The Hound of Heaven” tracks us down, we are falling further into His Loving arms each step we take – no matter what direction that is. He, once we have given Him our heart (even the tiniest piece of it) will not give any of it back.
Can we see it? All along the way, our failures do not serve to push us away from Him. Rather, they convince us of our inability to get along without Him. So, every time we turn from our foolishness and change our minds about taking our own life into our own hands (again and again), we (again and again) see that it is the goodness of G_d to which we are turning.
So, hopefully this fool of a writer is making a point. What if we simply quit worrying about how our behavior is pushing us away from G_d? Because, once we see who He is, we begin to realize that it is impossible for us to escape Him. Even our failures are something He is using to bring us into a right relationship with Himself.
However, what if it is true (and it is) that we could greatly accelerate the process of letting Him make us as good as Himself? What if we quit running and put down roots in the center of His presence? Yes, G_d is everywhere. But each of us know there are places and ways to meet Him and stay. Tonight is your night beloved. Time to let Him catch you. It is inevitable. But, pushing joy away is such a burden.
Put it down child. Just put it down.
