Oh Dear What Could The Matter Be - Part Two

I’ll say it again: I feel certain I’m on the right track with this winnowing venture. I see benefits already. I find sound structure in places where there wasn’t any before. And there is scaffolding going up in other areas as the stewarding, saving, sifting, and shifting are being built into more tangible realities.

A few posts ago I acknowledged “how swiftly and how surely I could get off course in the midst of it in all the places that matter. The path could veer so easily, with a trajectory and velocity a thousand miles from the original course and pace.” This, of course, is still so true. It will always be a must to maintain a checks-and-balances system, an accounting as I go. What I knew in that last post that I would eventually have to look at and seriously mull over is the reality that, at times, the veering of course and path or the changing of trajectory and velocity IS THE OBJECTIVE and not a hindrance.

I don’t like that. I want to make plans. I want to stick to them. I want to do what I want to do. Plain and simple. Anything other than that requires a place of humility and grace and surrender that absolutely does not come naturally. PreacherMan talked about this sort of humility Sunday, the kind that remembers and relinquishes to the truth that a man makes plans but God wants to determine his steps. I know this. I live this, to some degree. But I can honestly say I didn’t expect the resistance I felt within me when challenged to let God interrupt my plans this week. Really? THIS is the plan, to take the plan I think I should be walking out (winnowing) and downshift it so the plan can be changed to who knows what? Ugh . . .

I forget sometimes. I forget a lot. I let it escape me.

God utterly loves me. He’s honored by my winnowing efforts. I know He’s at the root of my desire to clean out, for a lot of reasons. He cares about my schedule and my time and my plans. And He cares that I know I am cared for. But my comfort, my calendar, is not His priority. I hate to even say that because it makes Him seem so unsympathetic to my every day. But I have not a singular doubt this is truth.

What I forget is what He relentlessly remembers. There are lives . . . no, not “lives”, people. Not “just people”, but this mosaic of intricate, eternal creations that He fashions and sculpts and pieces together from the most basic levels to the most complex; souls He’s thought up, thinks about, held in His hand, and plans for and hopes for and loves. People originating in Him and too often snatched away.

People He paid The Ransom for. Some of them, even still, held hostage in empires of dirt.

That’s what too often escapes me. Lives in shambles. Relationships in ruins. The best parts of people lying comatose, or even dead, because of hurt or abuse or neglect or arrogance. The blind, the deaf, the leprous, the abandoned.

I forget.

He doesn’t.

He wants to take me in as confidant. He wants me to sow in tears, moved by the anguish of His broken Daddy’s heart for His children, and His shattered Lover’s heart for the object of His deepest affections. He wants to hold me close till I get it, till the craving of His heart is palpable in my own. He loves me, and I know it. But He loves them, too, and they may not.

He cares about my agenda, but make no mistake, He has one, too. And if I lose the pulse of His, the emptiness and annihilation of real purpose would swallow every plan I make.

God, swiftly and surely get me off my course in the midst of all the places I think matter. Veer the path with a trajectory and velocity a thousand miles from the original course and pace.

Winnow my will. Give me Yours.

“How often I’ve ached to embrace you . . . the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let Me . . . and now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town.” Matthew 23:37-38