cairns

My eighteen year old just left.  As far as I can tell she may be quitting school too.  Her reasons make no sense.  I am undone…..nothing left to say……no place to go…….no desire to talk……..EVSC was allowed to destroy my life’s work…….so there is my family, no wait that’s a joke too………You give all you have, and they just berate you for having nothing left……Some very powerful force has been attacking me and my family for the past two years and it is beyond my comprehension (and anything those nearby who claim to understand such things understand either!)……It would be very easy for my wife and I to just give up, on everything…we need prayers for those who are sitting in the abyss crying out like Christ on the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?”

12+ hours later:  Her proclamations of God telling her to defy us and go her own way keep reminding me of how often the “voice of God” tells exactly what we already wanted to hear.  Not what the Bible records.  I find a lot more responses there of, “You must be kidding, God!”  But, we all do it.  I am guilty.  I know pastors and “super” Christians who do it constantly.

What really hurts is combining it with, “I really love you and don’t want to hurt you.”  In John 14 and 15 Jesus very clearly states repeatedly that loving Him is not a matter of some emotional response, but of obedience.  To say you love somebody and refuse to heed their authority, counsel, dreams, or thoughts — a very broad definition of disobedience ( to completely disregard the view and counsel of the one who loves you) I know — is not what Jesus called love.

And, it all brings me back to grace.  If it hurts this bad to be rejected and betrayed as an earthly father, what must it be for a Father who is Creator and Sustainer, who doesn’t just have good intentions but actually knows and offers only the best?  What must it be like to have it multiplied by the population of the planet?  How easily we sing Amazing Grace.  I only begin to understand how amazing is grace that ignores our betrayal, ignorance, intentional blindness to Truth, willful demands for independence from the very source of Life.

To be constantly and repeatedly (not just in a magic once for all blame it on the garden fall, but everyday and time after time) rejected by us in our ignorant confidence that we know it all, and then to pursue us so hard it kills Him??  Grace!  It is a word of power and mystery far beyond our easy use of the word.  I need some, to be able to keep giving it.  I need to see the next rock, the next positive step in this chaos.

peace

3 Comments »