If you’ve been told you’re too much or not enough, if you’ve been carrying fear, shame, exhaustion, or rage, hear this good news. The Lord stands beside you.
And yet a door to another world still stands open to every moment. A door to a better way. Which is to see your life, not as an achievement of your savvy and your will, but as a gift. A gift from a loving God who doesn’t trick us into faithfulness or force us into submission, because that’s not love. A gift from the God who woos us with blessings that are given in spite of our selfish shrewdness, not as rewards. Blessings given simply because it is the nature of love to bless. A door stands open. But you won’t be tricked or shoved through it. Because it’s open to life in the realm of gift and love. It will still cost you everything you’ve tricked this world out of thus far. But could you send all of that to the far side of the river, and limp through the door into another way of being alive?
And so this little moment of counsel from twenty-five-some-odd centuries ago helps me learn how to do that. What to do when I find myself waking up in a strange place that I don’t recognize and can only mutter: I don’t understand this world, I don’t want this, I don’t know what to do with all this. “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce… Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
What would it take for you to give up, at least a little, the credit taking game and step a little more fully into a deeper faith in your belovedness by God?