"Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them". -- Leo Tolstoy
Wow, loss is so hard! There are all sorts of loss...the loss through death, the loss of a friendship, relationship and also the loss of a dream. How hard it is to lose anything that the heart has invested anything in. I think that is the main reason why loss is so hard, the heart has lost it's investment..or has it? I think that is the illusion of loss. When I think of loss of think of the fact that if I hurt at all from it, it is only because I had put some sort of something in it. Whatever that may be--love, expectation, hope, etc. I guess for me I feel that no matter what I lose, I never really lose.
My experience with loss has been great. I have mostly seen people come and go into my life and have experienced a few deaths as well. What I found is that with every circumstance I feared going into the relationship or experience; the fear I had was, what if I don't get to keep what I have been given? What if all I hoped for is lost and I am left empty handed? On the flip side of that picture is this--what if at the end of each of these experiences and even during them, I have something to learn about myself? What if making this investment of time, love, energy, etc helps me to become less selfish? What if this person, place, situation, etc is the gateway to my happiness? what if it is the thing before "The Thing!"
The reality is that when I am in these situations I cannot, and sometimes even refuse to see, the above possibilities. Why? Because I am unwilling to trust that what God has for me is better than what I can see for myself in that very moment. What loss brings forth within us is suffering--suffering is contained in loss to draw us back to God. He uses everything to bring us back to Himself...He desires that we desire Him alone!
The image that comes to mind is a road-- The people you do meet along the way either get to walk with you or are your guide to the path that God longs for you to take. It reminds me of a staircase--each stair is important for the journey to be completed--but each stair must be left so that you can reach your goal. Sometimes we stop to sit down and rest, but each stair lifts us up and carries us further and further along the journey that we are called to walk in this life!!
Loss has never been easy for me. In fact I have fought a long hard battle with the Lord to keep everything that I receive from Him!! haha! Yet what he has taught me is that the people he sends me are gifts--whether they be family or friends! They are all there to serve a purpose in my life. Whether that purpose be for wounds to be healed or virtue to be built etc. Holding on to them would have prolonged all that God had to do in my life. He allows us these losses to show us what we are made of and what we need to work on in our hearts!
I was told one time people are in our lives for a reason, a season, or always! That is a hard truth right there! I think it is pretty cool that God does not tell you how long people will be there and what purpose they will serve. He does it so that we can trust him and that we can just enjoy the person in that moment and invest whatever the person or situation brings out of us. Whatever is brought out, is the blessing.
When people die what happens: families get brought together, people make peace with each other, people remember what a gift the people were in their lives and old wounds begin to soften--why? Because great loss is painful because it holds within it great love--and love can do nothing but soften, heal and bring peace and joy! With every loss he makes more room for himself and he allows for us a great capacity to love!
My greatest losses have always been my greatest blessings--he did not allow pain without a gift! He brought out of me, with every loss, more and more of me! When i look back at what I have lost in my life: friendships, relationships, jobs, dreams, expectations, etc...all of them brought me joy at some point but their leaving in my life only brought me to something better! Everyone of them have made me stronger and more and more of whom I am called to be. The loss always brought me back to the arms of Christ, who never leaves, never disappoints and who always has my best interest involved.
I know for me today loss is still hard and I go into a lot of situations thinking, well I wonder how long this will last? Then I think, well if anything I am going to enjoy it and see what God does have in store. I am going to love every person he gives me and see what kind of arrow they are in my journey! They may even be walking companions! All in all, I miss out when I don't enjoy the journey and all that comes with it.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Love Begins with a Dream
Taken from The World's First Love
by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Every person carries within his heart a blueprint of the one he loves. What seems to be "love at first sight" is actually the fulfillment of desire, the realization of a dream. Plato, sensing this, said that all knowledge is a recollection from a previous existence. This is not true as he states it, but it is true if one understands it to mean that we already have an ideal in us, one that is made by our thinking, our habits, our experiences, and our desires. Otherwise, how would we know immediately, on seeing persons or things, that we loved them? Before meeting certain people we already have a pattern and mold of what we like and what we do not like; certain persons fit into that pattern, others do not.
When we hear music for the first time, we either like or dislike it. We judge it by the music we already have heard in our own hearts. Jittery minds, which cannot long repose in one object of thought or in continuity of an ideal, love music that is distracting, excited, and jittery. Calm minds like calm music: the heart has its own secret melody, and one day, when the score is played, the heart answers: "This is it." So it is with love. A tiny architect works inside the human heart drawing sketches of the ideal love from the people it sees, from the books it reads, from its hopes and daydreams, in the fond hope that the eye may one day see the ideal and the hand touch it. Life becomes satisfying the moment the dream is seen walking, and the person appears as the incarnation of all that one loved. The liking is instantaneous—because, actually, it was there waiting for a long time. Some go through life without ever meeting what they call their ideal. This could be very disappointing, if the ideal never really existed. But the absolute ideal of every heart does exist, and it is God. All human love is an initiation into the Eternal. Some find the Ideal in substance without passing through the shadow.
God, too, has within Himself blueprints of everything in the universe. As the architect has in his mind a plan of the house before the house is built, so God has in His Mind an archetypal idea of every flower, bird, tree, springtime, and melody. There never was a brush touched to canvas or a chisel to marble without some great pre-existing idea. So, too, every atom and every rose is a realization and concretion of an idea existing in the Mind of God from all eternity. All creatures below man correspond to the pattern God has in His Mind. A tree is truly a tree because it corresponds to God's idea of a tree. A rose is a rose because it is God's idea of a rose wrapped up in chemicals and tints and life. But it is not so with persons. God has to have two pictures of us: one is what we are, and the other is what we ought to be. He has the model, and He has the reality: the blueprint and the edifice, the score of the music and the way we play it. God has to have these two pictures because in each and every one of us there is some disproportion and want of conformity between the original plan and the way we have worked it out. The image is blurred; the print is faded. For one thing, our personality is not complete in time; we need a renewed body. Then, too, our sins diminish our personality; our evil acts daub the canvas the Master Hand designed. Like unhatched eggs, some of us refuse to be warmed by the Divine Love, which is so necessary for incubation to a higher level. We are in constant need of repairs; our free acts do not coincide with the law of our being; we fall short of all God wants us to be. St. Paul tells us that we were predestined, before the foundations of the world were laid, to become the sons of God. But some of us will not fulfill that hope.
There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His Own Mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the Heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The Ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written. Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization.
That is why, through the centuries, Christian liturgy has applied to her the words of the Book of Proverbs. Because she is what God wanted us all to be, she speaks of herself as the Eternal blueprint in the Mind of God, the one whom God loved before she was a creature. She is even pictured as being with Him not only at creation but also before creation. She existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers—she is the world's first love.
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything, from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old, before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived; neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out; the mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth. He had not yet made the earth, or the rivers, or the poles of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was present; when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths; when He established the sky above and poised the fountains of waters; when He compassed the sea with its bounds and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits; when He balanced the foundations of the earth; I was with Him, forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men. Now, therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me and that watcheth daily at my gates and waiteth at the posts of my doors. He that shall find me shall find life and shall have salvation from the Lord" (Prov 8:22-35).
But God not only thought of her in eternity; He also had her in mind at the beginning of time. In the beginning of history, when the human race fell through the solicitation of a woman, God spoke to the Devil and said, "I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in wait at her heels" (Gen 3:15). God was saying that, if it was by a woman that man fell, it would be through a woman that God would be revenged. Whoever His Mother would be, she would certainly be blessed among women, and because God Himself chose her, He would see to it that all generations would call her blessed.
When God willed to become Man, He had to decide on the time of His coming, the country in which He would be born, the city in which He would be raised, the people, the race, the political and economic systems that would surround Him, the language He would speak, and the psychological attitudes with which He would come in contact as the Lord of History and the Savior of the World.
All these details would depend entirely on one factor: the woman who would be His Mother. To choose a mother is to choose a social position, a language, a city, an environment, a crisis, and a destiny.
His Mother was not like ours, whom we accepted as something historically fixed, which we could not change; He was born of a Mother whom He chose before He was born. It is the only instance in history where both the Son willed the Mother and the Mother willed the Son. And this is what the Creed means when it says "born of the Virgin Mary." She was called by God as Aaron was, and Our Lord was born not just of her flesh but also by her consent.
Before taking unto Himself a human nature, He consulted with the Woman, to ask her if she would give Him a man. The Manhood of Jesus was not stolen from humanity, as Prometheus stole fire from heaven; it was given as a gift.
The first man, Adam, was made from the slime of the earth. The first woman was made from a man in an ecstasy. The new Adam, Christ, comes from the new Eve, Mary, in an ecstasy of prayer and love of God and the fullness of freedom.
We should not be surprised that she is spoken of as a thought by God before the world was made. When Whistler painted the picture of his mother, did he not have the image of her in his mind before he ever gathered his colors on his palette? If you could have preexisted your mother (not artistically, but really), would you not have made her the most perfect woman that ever lived—one so beautiful she would have been the sweet envy of all women, and one so gentle and so merciful that all other mothers would have sought to imitate her virtues? Why, then, should we think that God would do otherwise? When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, "You know how it is; one tries to make one's Mummy just as nice as he can." When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could—and that would make her a perfect Mother.
by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Every person carries within his heart a blueprint of the one he loves. What seems to be "love at first sight" is actually the fulfillment of desire, the realization of a dream. Plato, sensing this, said that all knowledge is a recollection from a previous existence. This is not true as he states it, but it is true if one understands it to mean that we already have an ideal in us, one that is made by our thinking, our habits, our experiences, and our desires. Otherwise, how would we know immediately, on seeing persons or things, that we loved them? Before meeting certain people we already have a pattern and mold of what we like and what we do not like; certain persons fit into that pattern, others do not.
When we hear music for the first time, we either like or dislike it. We judge it by the music we already have heard in our own hearts. Jittery minds, which cannot long repose in one object of thought or in continuity of an ideal, love music that is distracting, excited, and jittery. Calm minds like calm music: the heart has its own secret melody, and one day, when the score is played, the heart answers: "This is it." So it is with love. A tiny architect works inside the human heart drawing sketches of the ideal love from the people it sees, from the books it reads, from its hopes and daydreams, in the fond hope that the eye may one day see the ideal and the hand touch it. Life becomes satisfying the moment the dream is seen walking, and the person appears as the incarnation of all that one loved. The liking is instantaneous—because, actually, it was there waiting for a long time. Some go through life without ever meeting what they call their ideal. This could be very disappointing, if the ideal never really existed. But the absolute ideal of every heart does exist, and it is God. All human love is an initiation into the Eternal. Some find the Ideal in substance without passing through the shadow.
God, too, has within Himself blueprints of everything in the universe. As the architect has in his mind a plan of the house before the house is built, so God has in His Mind an archetypal idea of every flower, bird, tree, springtime, and melody. There never was a brush touched to canvas or a chisel to marble without some great pre-existing idea. So, too, every atom and every rose is a realization and concretion of an idea existing in the Mind of God from all eternity. All creatures below man correspond to the pattern God has in His Mind. A tree is truly a tree because it corresponds to God's idea of a tree. A rose is a rose because it is God's idea of a rose wrapped up in chemicals and tints and life. But it is not so with persons. God has to have two pictures of us: one is what we are, and the other is what we ought to be. He has the model, and He has the reality: the blueprint and the edifice, the score of the music and the way we play it. God has to have these two pictures because in each and every one of us there is some disproportion and want of conformity between the original plan and the way we have worked it out. The image is blurred; the print is faded. For one thing, our personality is not complete in time; we need a renewed body. Then, too, our sins diminish our personality; our evil acts daub the canvas the Master Hand designed. Like unhatched eggs, some of us refuse to be warmed by the Divine Love, which is so necessary for incubation to a higher level. We are in constant need of repairs; our free acts do not coincide with the law of our being; we fall short of all God wants us to be. St. Paul tells us that we were predestined, before the foundations of the world were laid, to become the sons of God. But some of us will not fulfill that hope.
There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His Own Mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the Heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The Ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written. Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization.
That is why, through the centuries, Christian liturgy has applied to her the words of the Book of Proverbs. Because she is what God wanted us all to be, she speaks of herself as the Eternal blueprint in the Mind of God, the one whom God loved before she was a creature. She is even pictured as being with Him not only at creation but also before creation. She existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers—she is the world's first love.
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything, from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old, before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived; neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out; the mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth. He had not yet made the earth, or the rivers, or the poles of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was present; when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths; when He established the sky above and poised the fountains of waters; when He compassed the sea with its bounds and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits; when He balanced the foundations of the earth; I was with Him, forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men. Now, therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me and that watcheth daily at my gates and waiteth at the posts of my doors. He that shall find me shall find life and shall have salvation from the Lord" (Prov 8:22-35).
But God not only thought of her in eternity; He also had her in mind at the beginning of time. In the beginning of history, when the human race fell through the solicitation of a woman, God spoke to the Devil and said, "I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in wait at her heels" (Gen 3:15). God was saying that, if it was by a woman that man fell, it would be through a woman that God would be revenged. Whoever His Mother would be, she would certainly be blessed among women, and because God Himself chose her, He would see to it that all generations would call her blessed.
When God willed to become Man, He had to decide on the time of His coming, the country in which He would be born, the city in which He would be raised, the people, the race, the political and economic systems that would surround Him, the language He would speak, and the psychological attitudes with which He would come in contact as the Lord of History and the Savior of the World.
All these details would depend entirely on one factor: the woman who would be His Mother. To choose a mother is to choose a social position, a language, a city, an environment, a crisis, and a destiny.
His Mother was not like ours, whom we accepted as something historically fixed, which we could not change; He was born of a Mother whom He chose before He was born. It is the only instance in history where both the Son willed the Mother and the Mother willed the Son. And this is what the Creed means when it says "born of the Virgin Mary." She was called by God as Aaron was, and Our Lord was born not just of her flesh but also by her consent.
Before taking unto Himself a human nature, He consulted with the Woman, to ask her if she would give Him a man. The Manhood of Jesus was not stolen from humanity, as Prometheus stole fire from heaven; it was given as a gift.
The first man, Adam, was made from the slime of the earth. The first woman was made from a man in an ecstasy. The new Adam, Christ, comes from the new Eve, Mary, in an ecstasy of prayer and love of God and the fullness of freedom.
We should not be surprised that she is spoken of as a thought by God before the world was made. When Whistler painted the picture of his mother, did he not have the image of her in his mind before he ever gathered his colors on his palette? If you could have preexisted your mother (not artistically, but really), would you not have made her the most perfect woman that ever lived—one so beautiful she would have been the sweet envy of all women, and one so gentle and so merciful that all other mothers would have sought to imitate her virtues? Why, then, should we think that God would do otherwise? When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, "You know how it is; one tries to make one's Mummy just as nice as he can." When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could—and that would make her a perfect Mother.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Where are you?
"I believe in God as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." C.S. Lewis
My question for the last few weeks has been, where is God in His generosity? Sounds like a harsh question for the creator of the universe, but it is a valid question when trudging through the muck of this life. I began walking through and questioning over and over what are you doing God, and goodness, how is what just happened generous!? How is God answering some prayers, and not others, generous? I mean the question needs to start with what is generosity? Webster defines generosity as liberal in giving okay, so to me that means that whomever we deem as generous has something to give and desires to give that which he has freely! That sounds about right! My question now is, why does it seem that God is more generous to some than others? Why does it as least look that way?
So I began to see my own life. I have been praying and praying to understand what God has been doing in my life and why it always seems that doors are closing and that I am waiting in the hallway for one to open. That I am trying to do His will but finding myself on the other side of the door, back in the hallway! It just doesn't make sense! What am I missing here and why am wondering around this hallway--is this my open door--the hallway, who knows!? So God has all these opportunities and does not give them all the time. He has all these doors but keeps them closed--why? Because he is loving and in his love is his generosity! boom! wow! I was talking to some friends yesterday and what came up was God's love--that it is God's love that allows us to walk and fall and stumble and get back up and even walk away from what we know to be true, but it is also God's love that embraces us when we return. That is how is all comes back to love! It is all love-- and there lies his generosity!
So here I am, still trying to understand, trying to box God up like I'm going to sell him at the store! He makes no sense but my desire to make sense out of him is me trying to be in control. Yesterday I was asked to read the story of Abraham and Isaac. The account is pretty mind-blowing when you read it! This man dying to have children, finally is blessed with a child and then asked to sacrifice him--that's tough! I mean why did the child come in the first place if they were gonna go away! But yet again the wisdom of God is beyond me! Anyway I read on and what I found is that Abraham did as he was told and was willing to sacrifice his only son. And when he was binding his son down to the wood, even though Isaac questioned his father, he trusted his father so much that even if death was where Isaac was headed, he knew that that would be the will of God for him. This story was so filled with a faith and trust that it blew my mind.
First Abraham was so willing to do what he was told. He was willing to let go of what he loved for love itself. He was willing to trust that what was given to him was gift and that God taking it would be gift as well. As for Isaac, it was the act of faith that he had to not fight with his father, to not argue but trust that whatever Abraham was doing to him, would be for his best interest, and that yet again he trusted his father with his own life! Interesting that both Isaac and Abraham were trusting a father and had to entrust their lives in their hands!!!
So as the story goes, their acts of trust and faith in the one that held their lives in their hands brought about a blessing! That both willfully agreed to do what they were told and for that they were blessed. The thing that dawned on me is that they did not do any of the above for a prize or agenda! They did what they did so as to do the father's will! That was the motive. Their was no deal that God made with Abraham, that if you do this, I will give you this. God asked and they responded, and in God's generosity and love, he stopped all of it from happening! He had a bigger plan that both Abraham and Isaac could not see and well did not allow them to see. God truly wants to see how far you will push for him! He wants to test where your heart truly lies...in this life or in His!
So where is generosity in all this? Well as I reflected more, I found that God's generosity came in different ways in my life. In all humility I admit that I was thinking that God's generosity was getting what I asked for. That is not it all. I wanted to see, what I wanted to see. That God's generosity lies in his fatherhood and in his fatherhood is protection, love and a foresight that I do not have. He would rather I learn a lesson, than gain a great loss. He would rather my heart be hurt than broken! He knows what he is doing and sometimes i think he doesn't and that I know better than he. Who am I to question Him and how he does what he does.
It's funny because people who know me have heard me say recently that the scripture about the generous landowner annoys me! -
What I am seeing differently today from this scripture that usually brings about the words unfair and annoyed is that God's generosity is not about getting what i want, God's generosity is first, different for everyone according to what they are going through! Also when I read that line, am I not free to do what I want with my money--I think now, yes you are Lord and the fact is, that person may need that money sooner than me--they may need a grace and a blessing that I may not need or can continue to live without because of my circumstances!!
Where are you Lord--you are always there! I just forget that sometimes the way I want to see you is not the way that you are showing your face. That the way you do things do not always look like the way that i think they need to. Or as I put it to some friends yesterday, I get to the climax of the book, things aren't looking to good and i stop reading! The fact is we need to allow God to work and know and remember that just because something looks one way, it does not mean it is that way! Sometimes God allows us to only see a few steps in front of us--and why is that generous, well because if I saw more I may not be present to those few steps. The fact is I can't get to the top without the few steps in front of me. They are as important as the steps after them. I am realizing that God is generous when he withholds the things I think I need or want--knowing that He sees what I do not, he knows what I do not and he understands what I do not. He uses everything to bring us to this faith that Abraham had and he knows that the sacrifice will not be easy but he asking for your trust that although you do not see, that you may trust in the one who does see all.
My question for the last few weeks has been, where is God in His generosity? Sounds like a harsh question for the creator of the universe, but it is a valid question when trudging through the muck of this life. I began walking through and questioning over and over what are you doing God, and goodness, how is what just happened generous!? How is God answering some prayers, and not others, generous? I mean the question needs to start with what is generosity? Webster defines generosity as liberal in giving okay, so to me that means that whomever we deem as generous has something to give and desires to give that which he has freely! That sounds about right! My question now is, why does it seem that God is more generous to some than others? Why does it as least look that way?
So I began to see my own life. I have been praying and praying to understand what God has been doing in my life and why it always seems that doors are closing and that I am waiting in the hallway for one to open. That I am trying to do His will but finding myself on the other side of the door, back in the hallway! It just doesn't make sense! What am I missing here and why am wondering around this hallway--is this my open door--the hallway, who knows!? So God has all these opportunities and does not give them all the time. He has all these doors but keeps them closed--why? Because he is loving and in his love is his generosity! boom! wow! I was talking to some friends yesterday and what came up was God's love--that it is God's love that allows us to walk and fall and stumble and get back up and even walk away from what we know to be true, but it is also God's love that embraces us when we return. That is how is all comes back to love! It is all love-- and there lies his generosity!
So here I am, still trying to understand, trying to box God up like I'm going to sell him at the store! He makes no sense but my desire to make sense out of him is me trying to be in control. Yesterday I was asked to read the story of Abraham and Isaac. The account is pretty mind-blowing when you read it! This man dying to have children, finally is blessed with a child and then asked to sacrifice him--that's tough! I mean why did the child come in the first place if they were gonna go away! But yet again the wisdom of God is beyond me! Anyway I read on and what I found is that Abraham did as he was told and was willing to sacrifice his only son. And when he was binding his son down to the wood, even though Isaac questioned his father, he trusted his father so much that even if death was where Isaac was headed, he knew that that would be the will of God for him. This story was so filled with a faith and trust that it blew my mind.
First Abraham was so willing to do what he was told. He was willing to let go of what he loved for love itself. He was willing to trust that what was given to him was gift and that God taking it would be gift as well. As for Isaac, it was the act of faith that he had to not fight with his father, to not argue but trust that whatever Abraham was doing to him, would be for his best interest, and that yet again he trusted his father with his own life! Interesting that both Isaac and Abraham were trusting a father and had to entrust their lives in their hands!!!
So as the story goes, their acts of trust and faith in the one that held their lives in their hands brought about a blessing! That both willfully agreed to do what they were told and for that they were blessed. The thing that dawned on me is that they did not do any of the above for a prize or agenda! They did what they did so as to do the father's will! That was the motive. Their was no deal that God made with Abraham, that if you do this, I will give you this. God asked and they responded, and in God's generosity and love, he stopped all of it from happening! He had a bigger plan that both Abraham and Isaac could not see and well did not allow them to see. God truly wants to see how far you will push for him! He wants to test where your heart truly lies...in this life or in His!
So where is generosity in all this? Well as I reflected more, I found that God's generosity came in different ways in my life. In all humility I admit that I was thinking that God's generosity was getting what I asked for. That is not it all. I wanted to see, what I wanted to see. That God's generosity lies in his fatherhood and in his fatherhood is protection, love and a foresight that I do not have. He would rather I learn a lesson, than gain a great loss. He would rather my heart be hurt than broken! He knows what he is doing and sometimes i think he doesn't and that I know better than he. Who am I to question Him and how he does what he does.
It's funny because people who know me have heard me say recently that the scripture about the generous landowner annoys me! -
These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat. He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?[Or] am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last" (Mt 20:12-16)
What I am seeing differently today from this scripture that usually brings about the words unfair and annoyed is that God's generosity is not about getting what i want, God's generosity is first, different for everyone according to what they are going through! Also when I read that line, am I not free to do what I want with my money--I think now, yes you are Lord and the fact is, that person may need that money sooner than me--they may need a grace and a blessing that I may not need or can continue to live without because of my circumstances!!
Where are you Lord--you are always there! I just forget that sometimes the way I want to see you is not the way that you are showing your face. That the way you do things do not always look like the way that i think they need to. Or as I put it to some friends yesterday, I get to the climax of the book, things aren't looking to good and i stop reading! The fact is we need to allow God to work and know and remember that just because something looks one way, it does not mean it is that way! Sometimes God allows us to only see a few steps in front of us--and why is that generous, well because if I saw more I may not be present to those few steps. The fact is I can't get to the top without the few steps in front of me. They are as important as the steps after them. I am realizing that God is generous when he withholds the things I think I need or want--knowing that He sees what I do not, he knows what I do not and he understands what I do not. He uses everything to bring us to this faith that Abraham had and he knows that the sacrifice will not be easy but he asking for your trust that although you do not see, that you may trust in the one who does see all.
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