Sometimes along the way, we are reminded of one of the most significant signs that we are headed home... gratitude. Now... for me it is a gift given to me and at other times something decided on, depending on the day and the events in it and especially when the road seems to have no end in sight. The Journal indicates that "we are to be thankful in all things for this is God's will in Christ..." One part of this reguires faith and obedience and the other part requires a clear reminder that "we live and move and have our very being in Him." It seems in this season that most of the truths we are experiencing afresh are based on how we feel about Him and what we believe He feels about us. While pondering this over the past week, I was reminded of a recently read chapter on this subject. Here is an excerpt:"To acknowledge that our Father is the source of all life and holiness makes gratitude the most characteristic attitude of the child of God. The petition "Give us this day our daily bread" expresses our creaturely dependence and the acceptance of all of life as God's gracious gift. It strikes down possessiveness and makes us conscious that we are beggars.
And yet how reluctant we are to receive the gift! We stake out our piece of turf, claim it as our own, become grasping, anxious, and care-ridden about the security (of these goods)...
We sell ourselves to the gods of security, sensation, and power, and a sickness enters the very heart of our existence. We grow competitive rather than compassionate, make others our rivals, steppingstones to our enthronement...
One does not find an attitude of gratitude in the slave market.
Jesus brings freedom from the money game, the power game, the pleasure game, and the pervasive sense of self hatred that racks our torn conscience. With insight that defies imagination, he proposes a new agenda that proffers peace and a joy that the world would never dare promise: "...set your heart on his kingdom, and these other things will be given you as well".
Brennan Manning says of himself... "This is a glimpse of the Jesus whom I have met over the years on the terrain of my wounded self, the Christ of my interiority. There is a beauty and enchantment about the Nazarene that draws me to irresistibly to follow him. He is the Pied Piper of my lonely heart..."
He goes on to say... "In order to be free to be faithful to this sacred man and his dream, to others and ourselves, we must be liberated from the damnable imprisonment of self-hatred, freed from the shackes of projectionism, perfectionism, moralism/legalism, and unhealthy guilt. Freedom for fidelity demands freedom from enslavement." A Glimpse of Jesus
Most significant for me is the statement that you cannot find gratitude in a slave market. I am so bent toward seeing myself as the slave/servant of Christ and not a son. One is much different than the other. And while I am, in some sense, both, my sonship is of utmost importance to experience true, life giving gratitude. I am reminded that He "no longer calls me a servant, but a friend...", a beloved one with all of His tender care and attention, in any season of life.
May you be captured afresh this week by the "Pied Piper of your lonely heart..."
1 comment:
"dependence and the acceptance of all of life as God's gracious gift." What a terribly good reminder, nothing is my own, all is a most gracious gift. What freedom just that statement alone brings. I can't worry because its not mine and I have no control over it, what ever it is because its all his. Oh Thank You daddy, thank you thank you.
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