"What are you waiting for?" Have you ever heard these words spoken to you? "What are you afraid of?" is the next question? Good questions for a person "stuck" in a job they don't enjoy, that offers no rewards, no advancement to a cause. I'm speaking metaphorically...somewhat...so don't get the impression I am miserable, as I am certainly not. The work I do brings rewards in the joy of serving others, but then, I have spoken about these feelings many times. Rather, I want us all to think about what holds us back from taking a risk.
I am a dreamer, and God has given me larger than life visions about my life. In fact I become frightened at times as I puzzle over "why me?" and "how?" My creative mind spins with new ideas, stories, research topics, artistic endeavors, homes for misfit toys and ragamuffins. I don't know how it will all pan out, I only know He has birthed the vision in me. So what am I waiting for? Time actually is on my side. I will be 65 in August, and it could be the start of something new in my life. Even so....!
My older son, TJ, asked me once what I was afraid of. I didn't think he thought much about me much less the plans for my life. Since leaving for college in 1992 our times together have grown fewer and fewer for more reasons than economics. I've had to pay many high prices in my life for the decisions I've made. I started to share some of his feelings with my readers once, but then, I thought perhaps it should remain private between the two of us. At least I know he loves me and thinks I am talented, gifted, and not afraid of being "me." I influenced his life for good, and in short, he knows I love him, and I know he loves me.
Thinking about the prospects of buying a home has caused me to vacillate between the pros and cons. One of my favorite movies is The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. When she first encounters this spirit he turns off the lights, blows out the candles. She makes some strong comments, sight unseen, of how he's a coward picking on a woman. Then we hear the words, "Light the candle." She responds by saying he'd only blow it out again, so he gruffly responds, "Light the blasted candle!" This morning as I was musing about a home I could almost hear God saying, "Buy the blasted house!" I laughed, but I do imagine He's grows weary of my indecision.
So going back to The Ragamuffin Gospel, Chapter 6 Grazie, Signore, I am thinking about the question "How shall we respond?" to God's outpouring of love by sacrificing himself, taking on the sin and reproach of the world. Perhaps it is better said by the author: "Jesus has journeyed to the far reaches of loneliness. In his broken body he has carried your sins and mine, every separation and loss, every heart broken, every wound of the spirit that refuses to close, all the riven experiences of men, women, and children across the bands of time."
First, when someone offers you a free gift, taking the initiative and issuing an invitation, what is the response? Acknowledge and respond. Don't think about it, take the offer. If someone is handing you a $1000 bill do you look at it and say "I don't know?" Take the blasted gift! "Well, I don't know, there's bound to be a catch." God gives us wonderful gifts, and we squander them. What once gave us great joy, pride in the ability, now sits on the shelf, unused and disregarded as valuable. We have lost the wonder of it all wasting time on things of lesser importance. Know this, once it's lost, it may be lost forever. And yet in God's great compassion for His children, He does offer us second chances, and third, fourth, and on and on.
Point in case. Growing up I used to tell my pediatrician that I wanted to speak Spanish and go where I could use it. Many years later as an adult I saw this doctor again, and he remembered what I had spoken to him. One person in hundreds he's seen over the years, and he remembers the words of a child? I call that pretty amazing. Do you think God had anything to do with that memory? I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in destiny. So have I used the gift entrusted to me? When I was younger, as a teenager on the job after graduation from high school I assisted in some translation work for a brochure. Then in my mid-20's I translated documents for the General at Fort Lee. I even translated questions/responses between an emergency room doctor and a frightened young child who had been stung by a swarm of bees and was having an anaphylactic reaction. But then, over the course of many, many years, the gift was pushed aside, forsaken, until...! Until I began to use it when I started back working "on the medical side" of my personality. And a most remarkable thing occurred! Whereas I was not able to speak with the same confidence I once had, using perfect diction and sentence structure, I have been able to get my point across by asking the questions in an alternate fashion. Now that IS a God thing!
The second response we make to such a grand gesture as forgiveness through grace is to trust Him at His word. We are accepted as we are, filthy sins and all, "Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest." Trust, sight unseen. Think about it, do you know anyone else who would be willing to do what He has done for you? Come on...what more proof do we need? Light the blasted candle! Forget the skeletons in the closet, the voices that remind you of all the bad stuff you've done, and the shadows of "what ifs" that crowd into your mind. Take a risk! I say this to myself, take the risk, and as He said to me "Trust Me." Once more Brennan in The Ragamuffin Gospel makes the correlation, "There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you."
Furthermore, he says, "Only love empowers the leap in trust, the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the readiness to move into the darkness guided only by a pillar of fire. Trust clings to the belief that whatever happens in our lives is designed to teach us holiness. The love of Christ inspires trust to thank God for the nagging headache, the arthritis that is so painful, the spiritual darkness that envelops us; to say with Job, 'If we take happiness from God's hand, should we not take sorrow too?' (Job 2:10)
The third response is one of gratitude for God loving us so much that He sent Jesus to pay the price for our unworthiness. And how do we say "thank you" to One who already has it all? What does Jesus say to us in Matthew 25:40, "I tell you solemnly, insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me." "Love one another as I have loved you." Simply stated...respect, reconciliation, friendship. Again I share with you, "The ministry of evangelization is an extraordinary opportunity of showing gratitude to Jesus by passing on his gospel of grace to others. However, the 'conversion by concussion' method with one sledge hammer blow of the Bible after another betrays a basic disrespect for the dignity of the other and is utterly alien to the gospel imperative to bear witness. To evangelize a person is to say to him or her: you, too, are loved by God in the Lord Jesus. And not only to say it but to really think it and relate it to the man or woman so they can sense it. This is what it means to announce the Good News. But that becomes possible only by offering the person your friendship, a friendship that is real, unselfish, without condescension, full of confidence, and profound esteem."
One invitation, three responses. Go ahead, "Light the blasted candle!"
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