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!