There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary – we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit! – Romans 5:3-5 (The Message)
I’ve been clarifying many of my priorities, but I can’t say I’ve done it because I have some sort of expectancy that something grand is about to happen. I just know that right now, right here is a time for reflection and repentance. It’s time to start over again, to check my motivations and actions, to prepare myself for whatever may or may not come.
I hope that something is coming and wait in “alert expectancy” of it, but I’m not going to let the thing be confused with the person who causes it to happen. When that transmutation occurs, I am left “feeling shortchanged.” I’ve stopped waiting for the giver of gifts to come and have turned Him into some sort of genie who is supposed to obey my every whim and wish.
That is not the life to which I’m called nor is that the sort of God I serve. I’m to shout praise regardless of the situation. I’m to wait, which is not to be thought of as a passive state. No, waiting for God is entirely active. It is a “passionate patience.” It drives me to act and to order my life in such a way that the God who authors all of it gets the glory. That is the life to which I’m called. That is who I am and what I am supposed to do.
All the rest – the writing, the art, the job, the Write Right projects, the desire for marriage – are external matters. God cares about them, but He cares most about my heart, and He will do what He has to to claim it. He will remind me of His great love and His transforming grace. He will show me that a “happy heart,” a term coined by my friend Esther, has nothing to do with getting my way but with following His and resting in His care.
Is something coming? Maybe, but maybe it’s already here. God is changing my heart, and that, in itself, is an amazing thing.
Image: Mooganic (Creative Commons)
[…] Getting Write Right’s Emergency Hope Kit to the Kickstarter stage took more time than I thought I would. I had to move the deadline I set for myself at least once, if not twice. The work was a little more intense than I initially anticipated, and it had its interruptions with business travel and a continuing shift in priorities. […]