Better

Ah, feeling much better today. At least I was until I went downstairs and was serenaded once again by Leo's awful shrieking. How I manage to keep from strangling that bird is beyond me. It's nothing short of miraculous, in fact, which must mean *gasp* there IS a God! Wow. Strange that He would care about an annoying creature like Leo though.

Then again, He puts up with me. (Poor God. I feel sorry for Him sometimes. He's got a bit of a job on His hands where I'm concerned, but He hasn't given up yet! Thankfully.)

Recently I read a fantastic book called The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill. Since I don't really have anything else to write about today, I'm going to share a quote I liked:

For the God who calls Avraham [Abraham] to the Mountain Experience must no longer be seen merely as the "mountain god"...He is the God beyond the mountain, the unknowable God, whose purposes are hidden from human intelligence, who cannot be manipulated...

The God who called [Avraham] out into the wilderness and made impossible promises has begun to bring those promises to fulfillment. But this must not mean that, through this God, I can see the future and control what has not yet come to be. I control nothing. My task is to be as open to God as I am to my own child; to both I must say, "Here I am!"

"Be not afraid," counsels God to Avraham. Be not afraid of His presence in your life. But, paradoxically, be afraid of God's inexplicable omnipotence. For fear of this God, as the Psalmist will one day sing, "is the beginning of wisdom." And this unnamed mountain in the land of seeing is for Avraham the beginning of fear.

The "mountain experience" referred to in this quote is the call of God to Abraham to take his son Isaac up onto a mountain and sacrifice him there. It's one of the difficult, crazy, terrible, and wonderful stories in the Bible. Difficult because we don't understand how a loving God could ask a man to kill his son. Crazy because it seems, well, insane. Terrible because Abraham actually sets out to do it, and we think, how could he?? Wonderful because in the end God provides a substitute sacrifice. But still we cringe at the thought that God could demand something so extreme from a mere man.

But Cahill hits the nail on the head with his insightful remarks, and I hardly think I need to elaborate. I think the truth is there. God is not a genie to be manipulated. I never know WHAT He is up to, and sometimes that makes me more than a little nervous, I admit. Actually, it totally freaks me out. And yet somehow I am comforted in knowing that He is with me. Not that He promises that my life's journey will be easy and trouble-free, but that He walks with me in the troubled times. I can't make Him do what I want, but I know at some rock-bottom place in my soul that He loves me, and for that reason every sacrifice that He asks of me He will turn back into blessings that I couldn't have imagined beforehand. I hope someday I can truly get to that place where that understanding of His love is really all I care about. Then let the storm rage around me, but I will be at rest in the still point of a crazily turning world.

I had a thought the other day, that all of us think of ourselves as the center of our own universes, so it is no wonder that bad collisions happen when we are all concentrating on our own particular little orbits. Imagine if we all came into harmonious orbit around One Center of the universe--God. I think things would run a lot smoother, don't you?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.--Proverbs 3:5