Il y a des défis
How do we express support? No, that's not my question. How do I reach another person? Someone I love is going through a real struggle and I can't find a way to get through to her that doesn't add to her feelings of helplessness, perhaps moments of panic, and what seems to be an ongoing process of closing down. Her problems are causing me problems, but so far I've been reasonably successful in not mixing that angle into any support, thank God.
And God is in this situation - it is palpable. He is granting me discernment and through my own peace and joy building grains of patience. It is not the things and issues and money and arrangements that matter but eternal life and the treasures therein. I want to better communicate this: how much better this imperfect life can become once we are in relationship with God. And articulating this want of mine, I see: it's not me who needs to speak, but God through me, or another instrument. Listen to the Holy Spirit once you are saved; really listen out for God.
I've long been impatient with the au courant use of "broken" to, in my perception, gloss over "the problem of pain" (CS Lewis). Brokenness doesn't describe the world to me. There is too much beauty and glory and possibility in the world, which highlights the problem of pain, by contrast. We go wrong through distraction and busyness and of course mostly through obsession with the limited, incomplete self. We are so limited! We can't get back to X or forward to Y - and can't live very well even in the dimly perceived moment. A lost person isn't perceiving the map or the territory; maybe doesn't even know, as the saying goes, which way is up. That doesn't seem broken to me but through habitual or intentional focus on the wrong things, they are down the rabbit hole before they know it, where any mere mortal becomes increasingly disorientated, at a loss. Lost people are lost.
Reaching a person who is in this condition will startle them, and they're not in full control of their reactions. It is time for prayer.
And God is in this situation - it is palpable. He is granting me discernment and through my own peace and joy building grains of patience. It is not the things and issues and money and arrangements that matter but eternal life and the treasures therein. I want to better communicate this: how much better this imperfect life can become once we are in relationship with God. And articulating this want of mine, I see: it's not me who needs to speak, but God through me, or another instrument. Listen to the Holy Spirit once you are saved; really listen out for God.
I've long been impatient with the au courant use of "broken" to, in my perception, gloss over "the problem of pain" (CS Lewis). Brokenness doesn't describe the world to me. There is too much beauty and glory and possibility in the world, which highlights the problem of pain, by contrast. We go wrong through distraction and busyness and of course mostly through obsession with the limited, incomplete self. We are so limited! We can't get back to X or forward to Y - and can't live very well even in the dimly perceived moment. A lost person isn't perceiving the map or the territory; maybe doesn't even know, as the saying goes, which way is up. That doesn't seem broken to me but through habitual or intentional focus on the wrong things, they are down the rabbit hole before they know it, where any mere mortal becomes increasingly disorientated, at a loss. Lost people are lost.
Reaching a person who is in this condition will startle them, and they're not in full control of their reactions. It is time for prayer.
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