Encourage me O Lord!
Affirm me that I am yet in your will.
Assure me that your purpose is being fulfilled, and all things shall yet work out for good.
Speak to me, O Lord, again.
Speak to me in my soul that the beauty I have glimpsed shall be repaired, restored, perfected and consummated in love.
(And yes O Lord you did speak, and I am affirmed.)
For all that I see - after and before me - is bleak, and bleakier. My human wisdom fail me to understand how things can be better - as my flesh knows and yearns for better - nor how are these in your will and are accomplishing your purposes.
Unlike a farmer who furrows the ground, seeds it and tends the shoots, I cannot understand how what is happening around me, and in the things I do, are even necessary.
I am totally aware that I am easily strayed in the flesh, and my heart is utterly deceitful, and there is no goodness is me.
And therefore I call to you, for only you are God, and you are my God even before I was born. My being and my reason for being are entirely in your hands and there is no integrity unless I am in you.
We all humanly seek security and peace, the absence of anxiety; and so we make plans and accumulate assets. We want to be confident and assured in what we know and what we can do, either with our strength, wits or, in the final analysis, our money. But that is idolatry.
So God shifts the ground from beneath us, making us constantly dependant on Him, turning us to seek Him, even as a means of last resort, and to depend on Him for all our needs, and not on our plans and our means.
God wants us to collect manna daily, and not hoard them, as it is our instinct. We just have to trust that God will bring down manna from heaven each day.
And certainly we, all humankind, are worth far more than any amount of sparrows. We only have to believe God, that this is so. But, oh it is so hard. And that is why this simple good news is repeated over and over again, a faith to challenge the harsh apparent reality that confronts us, if not in the flesh, certainly in the mind.
The greatest fear is not knowing what's next, and the greatest faith is to trust God entirely for what's next, knowing only that what's next can be yet more pain.
But such is the walk of faith; and the righteous are those faithful.
Assure me that your purpose is being fulfilled, and all things shall yet work out for good.
Speak to me, O Lord, again.
Speak to me in my soul that the beauty I have glimpsed shall be repaired, restored, perfected and consummated in love.
(And yes O Lord you did speak, and I am affirmed.)
For all that I see - after and before me - is bleak, and bleakier. My human wisdom fail me to understand how things can be better - as my flesh knows and yearns for better - nor how are these in your will and are accomplishing your purposes.
Unlike a farmer who furrows the ground, seeds it and tends the shoots, I cannot understand how what is happening around me, and in the things I do, are even necessary.
I am totally aware that I am easily strayed in the flesh, and my heart is utterly deceitful, and there is no goodness is me.
And therefore I call to you, for only you are God, and you are my God even before I was born. My being and my reason for being are entirely in your hands and there is no integrity unless I am in you.
We all humanly seek security and peace, the absence of anxiety; and so we make plans and accumulate assets. We want to be confident and assured in what we know and what we can do, either with our strength, wits or, in the final analysis, our money. But that is idolatry.
So God shifts the ground from beneath us, making us constantly dependant on Him, turning us to seek Him, even as a means of last resort, and to depend on Him for all our needs, and not on our plans and our means.
God wants us to collect manna daily, and not hoard them, as it is our instinct. We just have to trust that God will bring down manna from heaven each day.
And certainly we, all humankind, are worth far more than any amount of sparrows. We only have to believe God, that this is so. But, oh it is so hard. And that is why this simple good news is repeated over and over again, a faith to challenge the harsh apparent reality that confronts us, if not in the flesh, certainly in the mind.
The greatest fear is not knowing what's next, and the greatest faith is to trust God entirely for what's next, knowing only that what's next can be yet more pain.
But such is the walk of faith; and the righteous are those faithful.
posted by Espion at 3:04 pm
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