...sensible things...

"GOD's distance must be complimented by HIS nearness."

I have been getting rattled lately by the reality of this quote. Sometimes it is easy to recognize GOD's hand in life, HIS perfect plans, in retrospect. While this view can warm the heart, knowing that someone so great and awesome cares enough to order our lives, it can also leave a sense of lonliness if the next steps foward are unknown.

I have spent many mornings driving to work thanking GOD for HIS incredible provision in my life: good health, a job I enjoy, volunteer projects I adore, priceless friends, a loving family, and a merciful SAVIOR. But in pouring my heart into these projects, I have misplaced a sense of HIS nearness. That is...until I began to get to know my students.

I have a student, a BEAUTIFUL student, who is 17 years old. This girl carries herself with boldness and intelligence. Last Friday afternoon I pulled her aside to ask about a new pattern of absence and I discovered something inside her. A stain-glass soul similar to mine. This child began to open up and share a few of her life experiences. I tried to listen more than speak as my grandma taught me to. As she spoke I quickly recongized the location of her mind...it seemed too familiar. Many of the broken places in her heart were mirrored by the shattered lines of my own.

I thanked her for sharing her world with me, and allowing me to be a part of her journey and sent her to 5th period, but I carried her stories home with me and began to pray over them. The nearness of GOD was exposed in my inability to fix things, and her independence to reject my words. Although she continues to show up to my class, and came to talk with me again today, it can only be the love of GOD to save her.

One hauting "French proverb says, "We should enter everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c`est tout pardonner - to understand all is to forgive all. In HIS soverign wisdom, GOD alone understands the human heart."

When she was done sharing today I was able to explain how forgiveness can help her to heal and find freedom. I hugged her as the tears fell and her body began to shake from the years of holding the pain inside. Again, I was hit with the reality of GOD's nearness.

"Amid the hurly-burly of Wall Street, the teeming traffic of rush hour, the long lines at the supermarket, their (artists, mystics...clowns of GOD) unexpected presence encourages us to reexamine our priorities, and does so with far greater effect than the apocalyptic threats of the doomsday preacher on the street corner." "It is GOD HIMSELF who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things." I don't want to lose sight of the immense value of loving other people...because that is sensible. To pour my life's findings, however small, into another to empower and comfort them makes sense to the core of my soul.

And GOD makes sense...HE loved me in this way LONG before I wanted to love HIM or anyone else. "It is GOD HIMSELF who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things."

I left work today with mixed feelings, not about GOD's presence in my conversation with this young girl...but with the definition of my job description and how that would mesh with the conversation. "Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, perver the character of the Christian life." Bill from The Garden Church in Long Beach said something a few weeks ago that hasn't left my mind, "Our vocation is not always our occupation, and we need to be aware of that." Legalism finds itself infecting many aspects of daily life, but I don't want my vocation as a follower and lover of CHRIST to take a backseat to this parrasite.

On the flip side of the same coin are frusterating situations. I have been thrown under the bus at different times, and the feelings of anger and desire for revenge/humiliation comes quickly. "When wounded people fail, as inevitable they must, they engage in denial to protect themselves from punishment. The perfect image must be protected at all costs." I am so quick to jump into retalliation mode that I breeze right by clearing the air and standing in the other person's shoes. And, as Mike Erre pointed out a few weeks ago, this does not automatically reinstate the relationship to its previous capacity. But, as Darren Rounzin explained this past Sunday, it does free you from other people's opinions and demands. By taking the proper steps to love before hate/resent, I am free to act as GOD directs me.

"It is GOD HIMSELF who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things."