Being out of town continually has both short and long-term challenges...for me and the rest of the family. We are confused about why this is necessary, especially when the perceived human toll of my being gone from home for weeks at a time accumulate...but we have slowly (by our measurements at least) come to the general disposition of trust in spite of the circumstances (not to say that we don't have our moments though!).
I am a bit drawn to the passage that Michelle just sent around. I'm wondering how I can let myself 'sink' further into the work I have been given:
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
-- Galatians 6:1-5
I suspect that I'm still looking for a rather sensational finish to all of this...and this feels a bit misguided or at the very least that I will be disappointed. At the same time, I'm finding a stranger (unfamiliar?) sense that I have much, much to be thankful for...even in human terms, let alone eternal ones...that somehow I can yet experience a kind of contentment from God, even if circumstances don't change.
I am a bit drawn to the passage that Michelle just sent around. I'm wondering how I can let myself 'sink' further into the work I have been given:
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
-- Galatians 6:1-5
I suspect that I'm still looking for a rather sensational finish to all of this...and this feels a bit misguided or at the very least that I will be disappointed. At the same time, I'm finding a stranger (unfamiliar?) sense that I have much, much to be thankful for...even in human terms, let alone eternal ones...that somehow I can yet experience a kind of contentment from God, even if circumstances don't change.
…I'm actually kind of afraid of this notion...and feel like God might be letting me in on it slowly.
Grace breaks through when we least anticipate it. God's love is stunning, disorienting as it streams into our darkness, accepting us as we are. As we open to love, we find something surprising: instead of ironing out the wrinkles of our character -- our neurotic wounds, our anxieties, our particular psychic dead-ends -- love comes to enliven us as we are. We are breathed into by the Spirit of Life, set upon our feet to stand before God and the world in all the glory and vulnerability of our true selves. We had imagined we would become some other sort of person -- that we could escape the bedeviling flaws of our character. Instead, we discover that those "flaws" are the very openings through which love can touch us to the core of our being.
-- Phillip Bennett
Grace breaks through when we least anticipate it. God's love is stunning, disorienting as it streams into our darkness, accepting us as we are. As we open to love, we find something surprising: instead of ironing out the wrinkles of our character -- our neurotic wounds, our anxieties, our particular psychic dead-ends -- love comes to enliven us as we are. We are breathed into by the Spirit of Life, set upon our feet to stand before God and the world in all the glory and vulnerability of our true selves. We had imagined we would become some other sort of person -- that we could escape the bedeviling flaws of our character. Instead, we discover that those "flaws" are the very openings through which love can touch us to the core of our being.
-- Phillip Bennett
