Shredding my nice tidy two-column lists

Bless our God, who holds our souls in life, and will not allow our feet to slip. Psalm 66:8

I call with my whole heart; answer me, O LORD, that I may keep Your statues. Psalm 119:145

I am bound by the vow I made to you, O God; I will present to You thank-offerings. For You have rescued my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living. Psalm 56:11-12

The LORD has pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who wait for His gracious favor. Psalm 147:12

And you, little child, have come from on high to visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow dark as death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1:78-79

What I desire: I desire to do Your will O Lord, I desire to always do Your will, and I desire to do all of Your will. And when I do not desire this, give me the grace to do so.

Ignatius’ Principle 23: My only desire and my one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.

…the free choice to give up the self produces, as it were, the free self, the authentic person. But it is a choice that must constantly be remade in every subsequent choice…this perpetual re-choosing of Christ is the great paradox and challenge the Christian faith. –Inchausti, Subversive Orthodoxy

Choices. Decisions. Love. Obedience. Faithfulness. Consequences.

In their original context, the Ignatian Exercises were given to those who had to make an election, most often for those who were deciding whether they would pursue the life in the Jesuit society. The Spiritual Exercises were designed to bring the retreatant to a place of mature discernment so that the best decision was made.

One idea is that there are times of Boundaries or seasons of transition, when one phase of life is coming to an end and another is beginning. Often, what lies ahead is not clearly seen. The Boundary time of life is always a time of discernment and decision-making.

Ignatius wants all of our choices to be made in light of the strong desire to always move farther along the road toward my chief end of loving God and serving His purposes in the world, for the praise of His greater glory.

Our natural human inclination, when it comes to choices is–what is in it for me? What do I get out of this? We make our lists of pros and cons and tally up the columns to see where we can get the best deal. Ignatius wants to counter that with his First Principle and Foundation and help me come to the place of indifference where you choose whatever is most conducive to the purposes and plans of God, and in this way I move toward my chief end. If that chief end means I must decrease so another can increase, then that is the way it is and will be. Ignatius wants me to have the Lord’s Prayer as my heartbeat, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

There are times when we make certain core choices which turn us away from certain pathways and set us on other pathways. Some of these choices are “defining moment” choices. Still, once made, they must be remade, rechosen in subsequent choices. If we neglect to continue making daily “rechoosings” then our earlier defining choice diminishes. There are vital spiritual choices each person makes that must be remembered, celebrated and reaffirmed on a regular basis. In this way, we move into the maturity and fullness of the first choice.

Imagine having a conversation with Christ as He looks into your eyes and says, “What you prefer is not my will for you. Instead, my will for you is that you pursue the direction that you are least interested in.” As you are imagining this conversation, what do you feel as Christ says this to you? What do you say as you look back at Christ? -Rice

Here I am, I have come…I desire to do Your will, O my God; your law is written in my heart.

Prayer: Holy Father, creator and sustaining wisdom of all that is, both in heaven and on earth, take from me those thoughts, actions and objects that are hurtful. Give me instead those things that are profitable for me an all who seek rightly to praise you. I ask this grace in the company of all believers and through the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who is, with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

I thirst

Thou hast shewed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. Psalm 60:3

There is a sort of driving drizzle outside, and Alan and I read the paper together in front of fire before he heads out to take kids to a soccer game and I go do my thing at Hillenbrand Pool.  That newspaper is packed with hard things from the slaughter of Nigerian polio vaccination workers to the bleak details of life in Honduras and Guatemala that are driving unprecedented numbers of immigrants to attempt crossing into the United States.

The folks at CHIRPA, Community Home Repair Project of Arizona, see hard things: vets suffering from post-traumatic-stress syndrome living in a school bus flat out in the middle of no where, Brain-surgery patients who can’t manage the three-inch step up to their trailer front door.  Speaking of trailers, who know their floors had such a propensity of rotting out, and leaving their occupants walking from beam to beam over an open sewage pit into where the broken pipes empty.  

They gathered together for their annual meeting in the main room of a small Mennonite church on the southeast side of Tucson.  It was a mixed crowd of older salt-of-the-earth white-haired sorts with crinkles of experience around their eyes and well-worn hands misshapen by arthritis but still with a lilt of joy to their step.  Mingled amongst them were the hipster save-the-world types, giving up a year of community service for mankind.  And looping them together was a warmth and love and delight in all things good.  Dustin comes home every day happy.  

And so we have three options when faced with the hard things in life, represented so succinctly by Jesus as a traveler attacked by robbers and left for dead by the side of the road.  We can pull our robes around us more tightly, withdraw in disgust and smugly blame him for poor choices made, we can pretend that we have much more important tasks requiring our immediate urgent attention, or we can stop and kneel down before Jesus in our midst.  While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

Back to Kate and Monday’s conversation.  Obedience equals joy.  

Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.Through God we shall do valiantly; for He it is that shall tread down our enemies.  Psalm 60:11-12

Every day they wrest my words

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into Thy bottle: are they not in Thy book? Psalm 56:8

He knows my wanderings.  My tears.  I am known. 

I skyped with Marco last night and he is hitting a wall smack in the face higher and harder that he has ever tried to climb before.  And God is there with him in Shanghai even in the midst of a job too crazy and too much loneliness and yes, he made Jincheng smile happily with a Chinese greeting.  And his tears are in His bottle. He is known.  

And Cate curled up with me on the couch in front of the fire and swirled a glass of red wine and told me stories.  And she has done some serious wandering since she wandered out of my seventh grade English class and Tom Sawyer and prepositional phrases and winning her public policy debate.  And her tears are in His bottle.  She is known.

And really Alan and I should get serious and sort through some of the books that are covered in very thick dust on our shelves and squished in on top and behind and there is a row of bent spiral notebooks with years and years of prayers marching across the pages, through shopping lists and little girl drawings and dead bug parts.  And my tears are in His bottle.  I am known.  

And I do not understand how the LORD of the universe manages all of His bottles dangling through the millennial, but I also do not understand how He made my hand to curl up and flex and wiggle and I can see it right in front of my face.  

And I know that the Psalmist speaks out our darkest cries, that echo back and forth through the hearts of man and are recorded in His book.    

Mickie and I were commiserating, huddled on the pool deck this morning.  We are old.  We have done this before.  We know what is good.  But every single morning, it is takes all we can muster to drop the fuzzy-lined parkas and jump into the pool.  Every single morning, And every single morning I push out of the pool, heart pounding, full of the joy of life.  

Cate looked me in the eye last night, and said, “I don’t get it.  But I know one thing, obedience equals joy.  Obedience equals joy.”

When I cry unto Thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.

In God will I praise His word: in the Lord will I praise His word.

In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.

Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto Thee.

This I know; for God is for me.