Conspire 20168/2/2023 ![]() ![]() The Godself is perfectly at home in the River of Mystery.CO Rev Stat § 18-2-201 (2016) What's This? People of deep faith develop a high tolerance for ambiguity, and come to recognize that it is only the small self that needs certitude or perfect order all the time. To stay in God's hands, to trust, means that we usually have to let go of our attachments to feelings-which are going to pass away anyway (which is the irony of it all). We all want to manufacture an answer to take away our anxiety and settle the dust. We mustn't engineer an answer too quickly. It is a kind of "negative capability" that God seems to make constant use of. But we must want grace and know we need it.Īsk yourself regularly, "What am I afraid of? Does it matter? Will it matter at the end or in the great scheme of things? Is it worth holding on to?" Grace will lead you into such fears and emptiness, and grace alone can fill them up, if we are willing to stay in the void. All we can do is try to keep our hands cupped and open. Simone Weil said, "It is grace that forms a void inside of us and it is also grace that fills that void." Grace leads us to the state of emptiness, to that momentary sense of meaninglessness in which we ask, "What is it all for? What does it all mean?" Without grace we will not enter into such a necessary void, and without grace the void will not be filled. Jesus understands this gift as a foregone conclusion: "If you, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit?" (Luke 11:13). We have been proactively given the Spirit by a very proactive God. This is probably the deepest meaning of "divine providence." So do not be afraid. The river is flowing we are already in it. Yet the Big River is already flowing through me and I am only one small part of it.įaith does not need to push the river precisely because it is able to trust that there is a river. I'm oriented toward goals and making things happen, trying to push or even create my own river. Soon I tend to be overly focused in my head to such a point that I don't really feel or experience things in my heart and body. I lose my ability to be present and I go up into my head and start obsessing. Then I want to quickly make things right. That takes immense confidence, especially when we're hurting. This is a divine process that we don't have to change, coerce, or improve. I believe that faith might be precisely that ability to trust the Big River of God's providential love, which is to trust the visible embodiment (the Son), the flow (the Holy Spirit), and the source itself (the Father). Strangely, your real life is not about "you." It is a part of a much larger stream called God. No wonder the Spirit is described as "flowing water" and as "a spring inside you" (John 4:10-14) or, at the end of the Bible, as a "river of life" (Revelation 22:1-2). Therefore it is not where your big life can really happen. They're not the whole You, not the Great You, not the Great River. They're usually based on hurts and unconscious agendas that allow us to see and judge things in a very selective way. Please don't get caught in your small stories they are usually less than half true, and therefore not really "true" at all. Grace and mercy teach us that we are all much larger than the good or bad stories we tell about ourselves or about one another. Trust the River Thursday, February 4, 2016 ![]()
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