Here then is the bottom line: As we seek God, we actually find what we desire.
One of the most cited passages in the psalms reads like this:
“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4, NRSV).Some construe this verse to mean that God will give us the things we desire—a new BMW, a vacation in Tahiti. That sounds nice, but if you look at the context of the psalm, it’s all about doing what’s right and following God’s way. “Take delight” first in the Lord. Order all other things around God. By putting God as my first love, and thus ordering my loves properly, other desires fall in place. And I find out what I really want.
When we look at God, we see a new set of priorities, a new vision of caring for others. And so, on the (b) side of Frederick Buechner's quote, what “the world needs to have done”—our environment, those outside of us—cannot be silenced. The list here is immediately evident: providing education, caring for health worldwide, creating beauty in the arts and culture. So it’s not just what we want to do—our passion has to meet some actual need. Here we move away from the siren voices of our culture that prize individual self-expression above all else. Here’s the control on our selfishness. It is not centered on what benefits us first, but on what is of greater need in the world.
So the first step of call—or our big Yes to God—is to listen: to obtain some sense of the direction that resonates deep in us and out in the world.
Does this happen at once? Not for most people. Listening for the call is gradual. Each insight builds on the previous one. It’s something like a website coming gradually into view. (You have to imagine a slow connection speed for this.) It doesn’t happen all at once, and even at first, it’s not clear what’s emerging. But at some point, it begins to make sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment