Thursday, March 31, 2011

Endurance III

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD
   in the land of the living.  Wait for the LORD;
   be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.
-- Psalm 27:13-14
So, here we are on day three of talking about endurance.  I'd encourage you to go back and read Endurance I and II, but it's not essential if you haven't the time right now.

Meister Eckhart (c.1260-1327), a German Christian mystic, told this story that I think illustrates a unique twist on how we perceive our troubles, as well as providing a compass for enduring, bearing, and hoping.
A sick man was once asked why he did not beseech God to make him well again.  He replied that he was unwilling to do that for three reasons.  The first was that he was convinced that God in His love could not permit him to be ill if it were not for his own good.  A second reason was that a good person necessarily desires what God wills and not that God should will what it is that they want, for that would not be right.  (Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings, p. 91)

We frequently fall in our prayer life to the low place of whiny children before Christmas begging for every kind of gift under the sun.  We quite arrogantly, at times, leap to presumptions of inherent righteousness and goodness such that our desires and wishes couldn't possibly be bad, so God should have the same ones for us if we only ask Him.  But, truth be told we have neither the goodness or the eternal vantage point to know all things.

We ought to desire what God desires in every situation in which we find ourselves.  Knowing what God desires is a matter of waiting on God to reveal that desire.  If we don't have the strength within to endure the wait, we'll not have the joy of learning the lesson God would like to teach us.   So, when faced with trouble wait on the Lord; be strong and take heart.  The answers you need are in the enduring wait for it.

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