Seven Dunks

copyright ConstanceLSchroeder2011, 

all rights reserved

It is rather humbling to be told:  "Go do this and you will be healed."  Sometimes we refuse healing because we don't like the way healing comes about.  We want magic, not some ordinary, everyday kind of cure.  We want God to make it better without having to be involved in our own healing.  Sometimes we even turn away from being cured because of our pride.  Ouch...does that one hit home with me!  

You see there are these twelve steps that a certain Bill W. established for people with alcohol problems.  Nope, I don't have alcohol problems.  Turns out that these simple steps help people with any addictive behaviors, and most of us have addictive behaviors.  Pride often keeps us from continuing on the path.  It hurts to make that sweeping moral inventory.  Gosh it hurts to look things in the face and find that the truth is cutting away at something in oneself that oneself thought was an essential part of her identity.  Truth shows us what is necessary.  It shows us that our lives are not about ourselves, but about service and love.  

Sometimes we look at someone else and think we have the answers for him or for her.  We think that if they just did this or that it would all work out.  Well, sometimes we are like Naaman's servants, gently asking someone to give it a try.  I'm all for encouragement.  Let's put that encouragement out there and allow it to do the work.   It's important to remember whose court the ball is in however.  Judgment, condemnation and accusations do not serve the situation well.  And sometimes we just don't have the whole story.  God does however.  And God is all about Grace.  God doesn't look at us and see all our shortcomings, all our sin, all our feelings of failure and uselessness.  God sees us with eyes of grace.  And that Grace is the greatest truth of who we are.

I think I'd like to take a dunk or two in that grace today.  Maybe even seven dunks!

  

Dancing With the Spirit

After such a long and oppressive stretch in my life, Grace has returned with a magnificence that refuses to be described.  I suppose it is a bit like being the recipient of CPR, returning to life after nearly coming to the end of life.  This meditation has lived in my heart for many years.  It is only now making real sense to me. I hope you find encouragement in it for yourself.  So many of us believe we have to be "good" in order to be acceptable.  Grace says it is God in Christ who does the work!  What Joy it brings when we understand we are beloved as we are.  THAT is the motivation for goodness and righteousness.  Unconditional love, poured out until we are just silly with the joy of it. . . with much love, Connie

Many years ago now I had a kind of vision and it had everything in the world to do with Grace.  You see that's what I believe that dancing with the Spirit actually is...living in Grace.  So back to this kind of vision.  

In my mind's eye I envisioned myself as a child, and I was dancing with great enthusiasm and joy.  I could have danced like that forever.  There was a beautiful light shining down on me.  I knew I was dancing for God, and I also knew God was loving my dance.  I could feel it in every cell of my being.  That dance went on for moments, for years, for an eternity.

But then it all changed.  At some point, I danced too closely to the edges of the light and I was snatched by the darkness, pinned to the ground, unable to move, barely able to breath.  A heavy weight, like a lead blanket was on top of me, and I thought surely I would die.  But I didn't, I just lay there, unable to move, unable to make a sound or ask for help, unable to see in the midst of that darkness.  This went on for what felt like an eternity, this terrible oppression, this absence of grace. 

Finally, I heard footsteps, and there, appearing to me in that darkness were a pair of feet in a familiar pair of sandals.  He was reaching down for me, his movements unrestrained by that terrible oppressive darkness.  He pulled me gently to my feet.  The heaviness fell away, and as I gazed into that beloved, glorious face he touched my face and smiled a kind smile.  I wept.  And we began to dance together.   But not for long.  The darkness was no longer impenetrable for me, and as I looked around there were many, many others trapped beneath that heavy, terrible oppression.  Together we began the work of helping others to be free.  Not everyone would accept help, they had become so afraid of that darkness, so trapped in that terrible place.  But many others rose up and remembered who they were and why they were here, and we joined together in the work, dancing together in freedom, dancing in grace, dancing with Jesus, dancing with the Holy Spirit, dancing with the love of God.