there is no panic in heaven...

Human beings are very interesting. We all come with this sense of... of... of… entitlement. It’s really very interesting. I hadn’t thought much of it myself until I saw this update by one of my friends on Facebook.

It comes so easy to us, giving each other ultimatums, and all those sistahs telling you that you deserve better and more and all manner of feminist speeches. It’s all good I guess, because yes, you must know who you are and what you can and cannot take from another person. It is intrinsic to your self-worth and survival It’s all good. 

Until you carry that to God.

Giving Him a list of unlesses and pouring out questions about “Why would a good God allow this’ or ‘Why me’ or like my friend and I have been musing recently “Surely God, a break has got to be caught!” That’s easy, it’s natural, it’s human. And I am human. But the greater part of being human is the ability to know when what you’re doing isn't up to par. And giving it up.

I’ve wanted to write some post since that last post I wrote, I’ve been musing over whether to or not to, but well, I can do half and half right? I made a good friend recently, happened to show literally out of the blue at the very right time, and stuck around long enough to see me through a not-so-great patch. I know all the blah about seasonal friends et al, but it’s hard to understand that someone can just, you know, go just like that. I’ve added this particular one to the list of things I will never understand, but hopefully I’ll be okay with it someday.

It wasn’t messy, it wasn’t hateful, it wasn’t laced with passive aggressive nuances. Maybe some parts of me are still reeling in the wake, I think we’re all just wondering how we could have missed it. And why God doesn’t want me to be happy. That’s not exactly false, He just wants me to be holy more than.  I dunno, I’m just throwing out various lines here.

But the best thing I learnt from it was the magic of the ordinary. I don’t have memories of grandiose gestures and expensive measures. I have memories of the oddest things. The oddest things. The oddest, oddest things. They were simple, they were real and I miss those the most. I am grateful. I wouldn’t take it back. The ride, the good and not-as and sometimes silly. I found out that some of those things I used to hear and think, broken science, they were actually true. And I think back with a smile. Because I became slightly better.

Anyway, which is why you know, I so wanted to WTH God. It’s not a pretty thing to admit, but yeah. I was absolutely unamused by that turn of events. I still am, a little. But you know, resilience, all this will fade away someday. But then, I’m looking at it all wrong. Technically that’s not true, I know the right outlook, I just wanted to whine, we all do sometimes. But the hard truth is, God owes me nothing. He does not owe me a break, a happy life, everything I want when I want it, the right to always have my loved ones around until I’m old and gray.

Nothing I have is anything I deserve. Anything I have is gift I’m given. Including the time I spent with him. It was a gift He gave me. My family, my friends, everyone who’s around in my life now, it’s not for my purposes or my comfort, it’s for His. So when He takes any of it away, like when He called Flo, it is within His perfect will. And He knows everything. I imagine I can choose to cling  and cry and whine and be sad, but the truth is, no good thing will He withhold…

You know, I’ve found many times in my walk that I have so much clarity regarding what I need to do. I know, and I know it with unshakable certainty, but it’s like, transforming that knowledge to executables, I draw blanks. Like when I’m speaking now, it’s so clear. Everything is so clear, but I guess it is as Oswald Chambers said, "we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there".

So here in my room everything is clear, and theoretically all is well. But the real stuff is when I get up from this bed and go out to meet life. Faith is easy when everything is okay, because the mountain resembles the reality. But when it’s all a mass of things you don’t understand, hitting one after another, that’s where the real stuff is. Oswald lived in the 19th Century, but his devotions are just timeless. You must read this one and this one.

So get up Joy, get up and get on with it.

Cornelia’s was one of the families that were sheltering Jews during the Holocaust. When they got caught, they suffered a similar fate – they were sent to a concentration camp. Her sister died, and then her father. And life was probably just as bad as you can imagine. But she was there, tending to the sick, the elderly, sharing her little rations with the other people in the camp. At some point, shortly before the war was to end, Cornelia was set free in what turned out to be a clerical error. Shortly after that, all the women her age in that camp were killed. God has no problems, only plans…

It’s easy to see that now because that entire story took me 100 words and three minutes to narrate. Took you even less to read. But between the capture and the clerical error, there were months of suffering and unending pain. Watching her family die. We are not made for the mountain, it’s to walk down here with the knowledge of the mountain. God has no problems, only plans…

Only plans…