Day 141b: To be alive in God’s Will … (September 17, 2019)
I passed by Barton’s Chapel Church on the far outskirts of Kingsport and was intrigued by its earnest request for divine assistance in “[staying] in the center of [God’s] will” – a state of being that, at least according to Jesus Christ, doesn’t require any celestial intervention whatsoever; a state of being that occurs fully in every moment we choose to sacrifice our own comfort to lessen the burdens of another* …
*see Matthew 5:48 + John 13:15-17 + Matthew 24:12-14 et al
“The church is the primary arena in which we learn the utter (and utterly vile) falsehood that our truest glory does not consist in what we do for others but rather arrives via what God does for us.” ~ via Eugene H. Peterson
“God is not dead at all — She has merely forsaken us for a time; left us in celestial solitude as we wipe our angry, hate-filled tears from our sneer-stricken faces after another shooting. All those stolen lives, snuffed out by our enemies — so we scream for justice! And yet God has long since quietly left all our temples and churches and mosques and synagogues. And She will not soon return, for what WE have done is so much worse. We have murdered the Soul of humanity. And know that God has deserted even the most devout of us – those who piously who save their love and compassion for those who qualify as good and righteous, as we shun and abandon abandon the bigots brimming with their hateful ignorance – persecutors of others merely because of their race or their sexuality or their creed or their species. Yes, they are the ones least deserving of Love, and yet they are also those most in need of the same. And so God’s agony rings in our hearts. She wails for all the future shooters and all the future throat-slitters. Though we reject them, God embraces these same cracked and confused creatures — those least deserving of compassion and yet those most in need of the same! We don’t know — and how ignorant we are — that every time we ignore them or criticize them or dismiss them or denigrate them, it is we who sharpen their daggers and it is we who stab humanity in its defenseless back. And we don’t do so in some random dark alleyway. No, we do so openly in broad daylight, for hating them exposes how small our own Love has become. Indeed, condemning those evildoers does not prove how moral we are, but illuminates our utter lack of the same. In truth, every shady shooting and every slaughterhouse slitting illumines the failure of our collective calling to Love others – ALL others – just as God loves them, to be just as compassionate towards them – ALL of them – as God herself is compassionate. Your prayers might heal your own despressions, yes, but for God’s sake, let God be. I say: First – well before you pray to God, resurrect your own humanity!” ~ via Kamand Kojouri
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