Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly... Isaiah 58:8
In the light of God's love and forgiveness, you are encouraged to discover the part of you that you keep hidden to yourself. The more you discover God's light, the more you discover in yourself the need for that light. It's like the revelation of, "I love you so much i want to touch you in all the places where you are lost so that you will discover not just your lostness but also in how many places i want to find you."
This exercise is prayer: to sit in the presence of God and to say, "I know you are a loving parent but i just don't believe it. I often think that you are out to get me, but today I'm going to stay here in your loving presence, and I'm going to present myself to you." Heart speaks to heart.
This is not to say, "Well, you'd better start thinking about how awfully dissipated you are and how awfully resentful you are." But, it is to say, "When you're in touch with your dissipation and your resentment, you don't have to run away because it is precisely in those places that God waits to touch you more deeply and to heal you."
Forgiving father, help me to trust that you will lead me to healing where i most need it.
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To me, this is the eerie and painful part of the beginning of lent that makes it seem daunting or miserable. Truthfully, it is maybe one of the top things that keeps me from spending regular quality time with God. When i sit before God, and actually spend time with Him, i begin to see all of MY weaknesses. It's just what happens when holiness enters the room. A lot of the time, that sense of my every weakness drives me from God's presence and into the arms of something else, like TV, or the internet, or worse. My knee-jerk reaction is to find a fig leaf to cover the "nakedness" of my imperfections.
Lent is about purposefully choosing to shed the fig leaves, and stand there naked before God. There is a sense of an eerie silence at the moment we stop, choosing not to turn to our many hiding places, but instead to wait for God. The silence makes a mere moment feel like an eternity. It is terribly uncomfortable to sit naked anywhere, least of all before the God of the universe. But, the most unnerving part is the sitting naked before ourselves, where we have to admit just how messed up we are despite our many efforts to hide the fact.
Still, it is here, and only here that God can "touch you more deeply and... heal you."
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