VI. HOW SHOULD I THEN LIVE?

There comes a time when I realize my grumbling is truly in vain, lacking in truth and substance.  When I experience the things I believe I am missing and have that “is that all there is” moment, I have to smile and humble myself before God.  What I have, all that God has graciously given me, is in truth all I need and all I really want.

I love the life I am living now, at this point in my life.  I lack nothing.  When I think I am missing something I am deceived.  It is like looking at the whole Garden of Eden and only seeing that one tree that God said not to touch.  It is like the Israelites been totally free of bondage and slavery but yearning for the leeks and bread back in Egypt.  It is just silly and I am humbled again and again.

Worry, fret, and grumbling are results of a clinging flesh that has not succumbed to death yet.  It is still clinging to the lie that God does not have my best in mind; that I can do something more to make things even better than they are; that I can be more like God than I already am.  The longer I experience living in God’s grace, the less the lie raises its ugly head.  The more I die to myself the more of His image I see in who I am and what I do.

How should I then live?  God says I AM and tells me to SIMPLY BE. 

I can live with that.

In His Image

The brilliance of the Autumn leaves

Is achieved only in the process of dying

For it is in death that the flesh is finally

Put to rest

Finally the Spirit is free and released from

All boundaries and barriers

Free to be all it was meant to be

There is no sacrifice without blood and death

There is no sacrifice without pain and grief

The self must be genuinely offered

The sacrifice of my will, my time, my need

Nothing must be held back

All must be bloodied and burnt

Then the glow of God’s glory will shine through

In all its brilliance and beauty

My sacrifice becomes a sacrament

My death becomes transformed in life

My image becomes fully His.