We live in a fallen world and with that comes hardship. Whether it’s a personal health crisis, or a community-felt crisis like this pandemic and social injustices, suffering will happen. In our social media saturated world, it can be easy to give in to fear and anxiety as our feeds are flooded with information and opinions. When these hardships come, how do you react?
Saying “thank you” is ingrained within us since early childhood. We are taught to express thanks frequently after any act of kindness. In fact, it likely becomes routine for many of us and we don’t honestly give it much thought. I’m not saying that this gratefulness is disingenuous but there is so much more to thankfulness than a simple “thank you”.
We talk a lot about grace. We insist on how we need to give each other more grace. We even insist on how people ought to give us more grace. We might even tell ourselves that we ought to give ourselves more grace. But is it possible we missed the point of grace? Maybe we got grace wrong.
You know how when you have company coming over to stay you suddenly look around your house and see how dirty and cluttered it is? What might not bother you or your family during the normal routine is suddenly not acceptable when you’re about to have friends or family staying with you. You suddenly go into a furry to clean the house and remove the clutter. Sometimes you look around and you realize you have way more clutter and junk then you need. You realize it’s time to clean house and make more permanent room in your life.
We often have preconceived notions about the what, the why and how of God’s calling. It receives no small attention from Pastors, authors of theology, bloggers, and the Jesus following Church member. I think that’s because it’s almost in no way theoretical and is extremely personal. Within God’s calling we find our guidance, our direction, our source of adventure, assurance and peace.
It’s so easy to let your self-worth be based on how you esteem yourself. When we self value and esteem our worth of who we are based on what we think we have the tendency to either think too highly of ourselves or too little of ourselves.
Jesus is resurrected. His body healed, complete, perfect in all ways except one. His scars remained. His scars remain to prove that He went through that awful ordeal on the cross. His scars remained to tell a story. His scars remained as proof, as evidence of who He was and the miracle to top all miracles for all time.
We hear inspirational speakers say “You know best, just follow your heart.” This idea exists (even in Christian communities) that we should follow our hearts. We hardly question it.
Even Moses standing before a burning bush was reminded by God almighty that he need not approach in haste or to consider the ground where God had chosen to meet with Moses as ordinary. Moses was cautioned to keep his distance and to remove his sandals. God declared who He was and Moses hides his face from God because Moses is afraid.
What if this past year was just a year where God was making sure your heart was ready? I’m not talking so much about God testing you but preparing you. Even if you think you utterly failed in how you responded to this past year maybe God had used a season of waiting, mourning and praying to push you to your limit to make you more durable for the road ahead.