This life is hard. In fact, it's a lot harder for many than it is for me. But even for me there is a lot of stuff to this life and sometimes it's easy to feel overwhelmed. There is so much to do... and it's easy to let people make you feel guilty for not doing their agenda or fitting their mold....
...but I live "between the trees"...
Between God's intention and and his redemption of creation.
And therefore it will not "all work out"... and all relationships will not be resolved, and all prayers will not be answered the way I want them and my friends will divorce and we will not all see eye to eye and I will feel alone at times and the poor will always be with us and I will always struggle with sin...
I live "between the trees"
And yet my God is eternal. And I'm connected to Him in a relationship that will continue long after the crap of this world passes away. And even more than that...God is in me. Eternity is in me.
Why would God love me us much that he would intrust me with His Spirit?
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4 comments:
I spend a lot of time thinking about why God doesn't step in and intervene when things are clearly not going how he'd like them to. It's not like I'm asking for a new 2005 Mustang (although that would be nice). I just want one relationship to play out the way God intended it to. I've heard a lot in my years of going to church about praying for things that God already wants to happen - agreeing with him in a way that guarantees you'll get what you want because God wants it too. But it seems it's more complicated than that. It seems that even God doesn't always get what he wants. And if God doesn't get what he wants, where does that leave me?
I regularly wonder what exactly it means to have the Spirit of the living God living inside me. I don't think that I know how to identify His influences, and that makes me sad and confused.
If we're "between the trees," which I really agree that we are, then how are we supposed to live our lives? It all still feels very ambiguous. How do we measure success and failure? Right and wrong? Omission and commission? Jared: I wish I had words of consolation for you. You have my thoughts, anyway.
I'm often confused by this idea of being led by the spirit too. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a fountain of ideas and options for what thing to do next, but I'm never sure which of those ideas are mine and which are "the spirit." If I went off on every crazy idea I came up with, I'm sure that would not please God, but I'm equally as sure that I'm missing something that he has for me by hesitating. I think sometimes I can tell the difference, but I'm never really sure. And maybe we don't need to be sure, but it would be nice.
Patrick: I appreciate your thoughts. If words could change things, they would already have been said.
When you said "relationsihps will not always be restored" or something to that effect, it really. for my first five years as a Christian, I honestly believed that Christians didn't have unresolved fights. I believed I could say ANYTHING (careless, mean, hurtful) to someone and they would forgive me and we would eventually work it out. The reeason for this was because we had such a tight, high-functioning community around us with strong leaders that people respected. Basically, if someone was really out of line, you knew you could always pull out the big guns and have Chris Pyle talk to them. Chris Pyle (or Angie) was sent to me more than once...and the fact is, I loved them too much and respected them too much to stay out of line for very long. I didn't want to live at odds with people that cared so much for me. But then I moved away. And the reality of the world hit me hardest when I saw entire churches breaking apart violently. And I hurt people with a permanence I never knew existed. And I have lost those relationships forever. I didn't know that could happen. I used ot think that I could say anything....whether it was out of sinful spite or good intentions and that even if it hurt he person, they would still love me and be my friend. This is not true. I'm much more careful now...and not nececessarily in a good way. Occasionally, I'm scared to death sometimes of losing people because of saying or doing the wrong thing. This is, perhaps an indirect argument for community and living communally, under authority. But when you're in that situation, if you have to leave it....you're unprepared for everything else.
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