“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)
Have you read the book of Job? Do you relate to his suffering? Do you find yourself in a bad place? Is nothing going right? Is the presence of God not found? Are you suffering the extreme silence of the voice of God and the considerable noise of your own cry and extremely loud thoughts in your head?
I want to honor your pain, for the “realness” it is. I want to honor the reality of your situation and your inability to change the situation. I also want to honor your anger with God, for not being the “magician God” you need to come in and just change your circumstances and your life. I want to acknowledge the conflicts, resistance, anger and the overwhelm of problems that you could be facing right now. This is your sacred wound!
I felt like I was in the thirty-seven chapters of Job since my dad died in 2011, as hard as I tried, the many different programs I tried, nothing changed my situations on the outside or the inside. God was silent! Very, very silent! Not everything in my life was bad but a lot was hard and sometimes extremely hard —with no sign of rescue. I got to a point of saying “Cool God, you stay there and do your thing and I will be here doing mine. I know you are real; I cannot deny that you exist, but this is the way my life is, I accept that you do not want to rescue me, I will go on living”. When I mentioned this to a friend, he said, “God is not scared of that reaction, and you are exactly where you are meant to be…” the next day my life was different. As Rumi famous quote declares, the light broke through my wounded soul. My journey to find my true Self had begun. I am so grateful and in awe of God for this, and I wish that for you. Henri Nouwen says it so well, “Healing begins when, in the face of our own darkness, we recognize our helplessness and surrender our need for control… we face what is, and we ask for mercy.”
When I think about it now, I have this sense that even though I felt light years away from God, I was still in the middle of the palm of his hand, but that is a much later feeling... a feeling of knowing, now.
If these words resonate with you, I want to say to you, you are exactly where you are meant to be, you are safe, your thoughts and your feelings won’t offend God. YOU ARE SAFE.
One of the quotes that I am loving at the moment and I hope that you can spend time with this one:
‘The Generosity of Infinite love in an act of love, creates us in the image and likeness of love for love’s sake alone, moment by moment, moment by moment. The generosity of God is poured out into our life such that we are the generosity of God. Apart from and other than the generosity of God we are nothing, we are nothing, we are nothing at all.’– James Findley – Mesiter Eckhart’s Living Wisdom: Indestructible Joy and the Path of Letting Go.
I pray that Love will come rushing into your life and give you the stamina and grace and peace to know you are safe and even as Love stands in the wings of your life, Love is there whether you feel it or not…. LOVE IS THERE ... YOU ARE SAFE ... YOU ARE THE OBJECT OF HIS AFFECTION .... YOU ARE IN THE CENTRE OF THE GENEROSITY OF GOD!!!
“The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
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