I recently read a section from "Ruthless Trust" by Brennan Manning.
When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at "the house of the dying" in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, "And what can I do for you?" Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
"What do you want me to pray for?" she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: "pray that I have clarity."
She said firmly, "No, I will not do that." When he asked her why, she said, "Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of." When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, "I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."
"We ourselves have known and put our trust in God's love toward ourselves" (1 John 4:16). Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love.
We often presume that trust will dispel the confusion, illuminate the darkness, vanquish the uncertainty, and redeem the times. But the crowd of witnesses in Hebrews 11 testifies that this is not the case. Our trust does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch. When all else in unclear, the heart of trust says, as Jesus did on the cross, "Into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46).................................I have not said in my heart, "God exists," until I have said "I trust you." ............................The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of the discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment.
Wow...I guess that enough for my first post. Does this speak to anyone else?????
WOW! what a whopper of an entrance~! Nicely done!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI still think there is some word that we have overlooked. And in the Greek it means clarity. I am sure we will find it if we look to say. . . Moses and Egypt. Somewhere there is a Hebrew word translated into the Greek and the sum of it's meaning is that God called Moses aside and clearly gave him not only a map, but narative instruction for the next 2- 5 years. In addition, God repeated the "vision meeting", if you will, every 2- 4 years. We just need to look a little harder. Come on ladies!. . . .
Clearly the: "letting go of clarity" struck maybe, sort of, a little, perhaps close to home.
Missy
Why am I always seeking to know the 'plan for the future'?
ReplyDeleteWhy do uncertainty, chaos, and undefined moments in my life scare me?
When I choose to define my own time & space, I trade it for the learning curve of liminal space...committing my heart, mind, and spirit to the Lord.