I am very thankful that God is patient with us
even in our short sighted rudeness.
I must confess that after the death of my son,
I spent quite a while telling God that he had
screwed-the-pooch, and decided
that we would talk later.
I mean, who is ever stupid enough to say,
“alright God, enough of this.
we are going to have it out right here
right now.”
Well that person is never too far away or hard to locate,
all I had to do was look in the mirror.
But, that’s how you feel at the time.
It’s the Valley of the Shadow of death
where nothing is going according to your plan.
When we read psalm 23,
we like to think of our most wonderful selves
passively perhaps enduring some injustice
heaped upon us, undeserved and without our consent
And, we feel assured, in our martyrdom,
of some special favor at God’s right hand.
But I think, more often than not,
we are just rude, obnoxious children
kicking and screaming
the whole way.
But then, in the midst of it all
without any tone of judgment in his voice,
God pours his love out and we are resurrected yet again.
In spite of ourselves.
Beautiful Jim.
Thanks my friend :0)
We really do make it hard on ourselves don’t we?
It reminds me of a conversation where two people were “discussing” the difference between joy and happiness.
I dare say neither of them seemed to be in possession of much of either at that moment in time.
it was either sadly hilarious or hilariously sad – I’m not sure which.
It seems we are always running off on tangents – like arguing over the color of the money we have just been given.
The real gift if we will accept it – is being fully and gratefully aware in the moment – accept the joy and be happy.
There is so much love holding together this whole thing we call life – that I don’t know how we bear up under the weight of it :0)
It’s complicated, isn’t it?
It seems that we make it that way for sure – once a very long time ago – one of our boys got in trouble for something – I don’t even remember what – and during the ensuing inevitable conversation he hollered out “well I guess I’m just grounded then, Fine”. I had no intention of grounding him – but I thought – well ….. ok – but didn’t say anything. so for like a week or two or three of not playing with friends after school and not going anywhere on the weekend and basically avoiding anything fun – it was a long time – he finally came in one day and asked “so how long am I grounded for?” to which I replied “I don’t know you’re the one who put yourself on restriction – you tell me.”
Years later when I finally realized that I was living my life that way I flat busted out laughing.
The poet Rumi says it best –
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi