THE CONSUMING LIFE part five

Does my followship of Jesus invite, require, evoke life giving? Does my followship of Jesus, volunteer, willfully submit, consciously offer all that I am, all I am becoming, for his purpose? My heart aspires to cry, "Yes, Yes, Worthy is the Lamb." However, the path that comes into focus as I turn to review the less than linear line by which I arrived at this point decries the myth I would propose.

The trail of my life betrays my lack of vision. The road I forged belies a truth, my vision of following Jesus is not enough to fully capture my heart. At times I am fully comfortable with the half-life. At other times I am tortured by the awareness and yet I am also aware self condemning spirit does not derive from a divine source. Rather there is kindness in the pain that comes from above, a kindness that leads us to repentance. As Paul writes, "the pain caused you to have remorse and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have . . . ." (2 Corinthians 7:9 NLT)

The Apostle continues and points out the kind of guilt, dread, pain that is not from God; "For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death." (2 Corinthians 7:10 NASB) The world without God is a ready source of sorrow and pain that leads to destruction. God’s pain is not like that.

Think for a moment how does Paul have this insight? How is Paul acquainted with this sorrow that produces death and the sorrow leading to salvation? I think like you and I he was well acquainted with these sorrows, both that which is dead end bound and that which leads to life, hope, rescue, vision and future.

God’s pain is to awaken me to greater vision and lead me to solid ground. Though each of us will lose the vision, wander heart and soul from the God we love. Mother Theresa’s recent letters show here moments of sorrow though I see here as no less a saint of God. "I am told God lives in me -- and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul," she wrote in one of the letters.

While I could say it myself I love this is found in the LA Times Mother Teresa's agonies of doubt place her in the mainstream of Judeo-Christian belief. Almost from the beginning, those who worshiped God worried that he had deserted them. In the Hebrew Bible, the psalmist cries: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" -- a sentiment echoed by the dying Jesus in the New Testament.