God doesn’t have to be good to anybody. He doesn’t owe us the breath we breathe. I figure if God has given us salvation, that’s way more than we deserve, and I won’t judge Him for not giving me something else.
–Rich Mullins
I awoke grumpy on Saturday. I was worried about too much and too little.
I should worry more about how I treat my wife and kids. I should worry more about the separation and independence I feel from God.
I should worry far less about money, absence of money, success, failure, emotional ups, emotional downs, disrespectful children, etc…
I knew I was grumpy and I knew I was treating my family as if I had some control over the things about which I was grumpy. My behavior was one part a facade dancing with reality in a make believe jig attempting to hide the fact that I was powerless over circumstances. Another part, anger, because I knew I was out of control. And yet another part, ungratefulness for the ocean of goodness in which I find myself drowning, breathing my final breath of self-sufficiency as I consider that ALL that is good comes in spite of me.
If we could only let that old man empty his lungs, and embrace death so that we could live into the life of dependence.
Hopeless?
No… far from it.
Later that day, after a long period of holding my spiritual breath, I gasped for whatever sign of life I could find, and I breathed deeply the “ruach”, the breath of God. The same breath that hovered over the deep in Genesis 1:2 and also that He breathed into Adam on that first “birthday”.
Oddly enough, my spiritual CPR came as a country song blared from the radio in the kitchen. Can you guess the lyrics of the chorus? I’ll tell you anyway… “Live like you were dying.” Imagine that!
The question shouldn’t be, “do you deserve it.” I think it should be, “what
are you going to do with it now that you’ve got it?” – Seth Godin
