Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. (6:11-12)How often have I based my feelings about my life on the circumstances of my life? More than I care to admit. I still slip into the attitude that life is good when things are going my way, and act out in irritation and a snippy attitude when things are hard.
I'm in danger of doing that today. Due to circumstances, life does feel incredibly small. In the moment, I forget that God is good and merciful and that life isn't all about me getting what I want. My smallness is evident, especially to the people I live with.
"We live in a world awash with fantasies of freedom... Living in the land of the free hasn't made us free...This is true even in the church...For there are people in those churches who are in bondage to self, to materialism, to addictions, to power, to their jobs, to anger, to unforgiveness.
Fortunately, not everything that has to do with freedom is a fantasy. There are some bedrock realities. And one of those realities is this: When I center my life on myself, my freedom diminishes and the life I live is constricted, anxious, fenced in. But when I set God at the center of my life, I realize vast freedoms and spontaneities in an open and expansive existence." Eugene Peterson, Conversations, pg. 1807I desperately want to center my life on God, to enter the wide-open, spacious life, but I'm struggling to do that today. We got some potentially devastating news about the adoption. Of course, it's still very uncertain - we know nothing for sure - but everyday it becomes more apparent that God is the only One who can bring Molly to us.
I honestly don't even know how to begin to process the new information. All I can say right now is may what Paul says of the Corinthians be true of me today:
You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. (7:9-10)Lord, I pray You'll show me how to live in freedom even when my heart feels like it will break. Help me to enter that wide-open, spacious life that's only possible through Your Spirit.
2 comments:
"Indeed, He says, it is too small a thing that you bring back the tribes of Jacob and restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will give you as a light to the gentiles that you will be my salvation to the ends of the earth." (Isa. 49:6) God calls me to this verse over and over. Am I choosing a small life - my interpretation being a life circling around my church, my family, myself? Or am I choosing to live outside these circles that are near and known - choosing to live in the wide-open, spacious life that may bring more distress and less convenience?
"Let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain... And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you've come out of this with purity of heart." (2 Cor. 7:8-12)
Praying for you, Molly, and this whole journey, sweet Cici. Love you so.
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