Continuing on my theme, I’ve been reading the above book by Brennan Manning over the last few days. I’ve been challenged and inspired so many times, and I’m looking forward to getting to the end of the book and musing over all the things it has led me to consider.
For now, though, I just wanted to share a few quotes and some of the reflections I’ve been having around them. Last week God gave me a word about activating trust. I didn’t really get it at the time, I guess trust is one of those things you think you take for granted when you’ve grown up in church, but I’ve been realising it’s something that I’m not especially good at, and in some cases it is something that I actively avoid.
Anyhow, enough psychoanalysing! Here are the quotes:
“To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, the cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in the darkness.”
“Scarred and screwed up though we are, an appreciation of our greatness as Abba’s beloved child, vibrantly alive in Christ Jesus, overcomes the sleazy sense of our own seedy self and elicits the grateful exclamation, “I thank you Lord, for the wonder of myself.” (Psalm 139:14)
“There are only two choices,: integration and acceptance of our whole life-story, or despair.”
I think what these quotes reminded me of, once again, is that I must continually choose a path of grace and gratitude. Sometimes it is hard, in the moments when work and life are hectic, or when there are those prayers that seem continually unanswered. If, however, I make the effort to keep saying thankyou, it means I am keeping trusting God for those answers, for the strength to work though the busyness, for the extra resources I need.
I also realise that trust and gratitude mean looking out for and saying thanks for the little things. Moments that I could easily gloss over or take for granted. Things like a couple of days away, the opportunity to walk along the sea front, a vase of beautiful flowers, a picnic in the sun with friends. I see these all as little indicators of God’s love for me, his caring about the small details of my life, and the coming true of the promises that he brings life and hope and joy to our lives.
I guess forgiveness and gratitude are two qualities that fuel trust, and qualities that are clearly evident in the life of Jesus I read about in the Bible. My prayer is that I can use each experience of my life as an opportunity to praise God and that, as I grow in the grace and favour he has poured out in my life, that this will spill out in my responses to the challenges I face.
