The answer I got was the deep conviction that I was loved, and what I was called to do was to love back in whatever way allowed me to love the best and most.... The specifics did not seem to matter to God….
That sort of answer does not sit well with most of us…. We want a definitive word. We want specific instructions and clear guidelines…. The vehicle most of us use in this search is the Bible. I have been surprised by how many people have come to ask me what the Bible says about this romantic predicament or that job offer…. Some of them want to know if they should let the Bible fall open at will or close their eyes and point to a passage for the answer to their questions….
The motives of these people are entirely honorable. They are seeking the will of God for their lives, but what surprises me is their willingness to put the answers they find in the Bible on a pedestal above the answers they find in their own minds and hearts, in the counsel of their friends, and in the world around them.
Brown Taylor insists that the Bible is not an oracle or a “how to” book, but a collection of stories that model God’s love in people’s lives:
In addition to lots of laws, a few genealogies and some sound advice, what the Bible contains are many biographies. Abraham and Sarah, ... Hosea and Habakkuk, John the Baptist, Mary and Joseph, Peter and Mary Magdalene.... It contains the stories of all their relationships with God and the particular things God had to say to each of them, how [God] loved each of them.
What all those stories tell us is that God’s word, God’s will for their lives, did not come to them in a printed manual, with specific answers to be found on page 536…. God’s will for them, which was [God’s] love for them, came in the form of a living relationship that they were free to embrace or flee....
Reading about their relationships cannot be a substitute for seeking our own. We are called to live out our own stories, to search for the unique shape our own lives will take in communion with God, and find [God’s] particular word to us.
-- Barbara Brown Taylor
