But it is slow going.
I DID read it once, all the way through, in college. Which was a very long time ago, now.
I was telling a friend I was re-reading it, and how slow and hard I found it, and she promised me that if I just get past the first part, which was more autobiographical and less spiritual, it will get better! So, Michelle, with your words of encouragement, I forge ahead!
Often, I need a few days to absorb what I have been reading. Maybe I am just slow!
I keep going to back to a few things: the words of Mother Teresa, which I quoted in a longer quote here:
I ask him to make a saint of me,
yet I must leave to him the choice of saintliness itself
and still more the means which lead to it."
How many times do we, as Christians, moved by a particularly strong experience of God, church, or love, utter the words, "Use me, Lord"? Sometimes the feeling can be so strong, that our spiritual desires overcome everything else, and we throw ourselves into the arms of God, longing that we might do something for Him.
But we often never think it all the way through.
Mother Teresa, in the above words, warns us of this, when she cautions us that we cannot both ask God to make us holy and dictate how He will do it. If we truly want to be holy, then we must allow each trial, each stumbling block, each pain, each joy to come to us as He wills.
"Not my will, but thine, O Lord, be done." Luke 22:42
Even should He desire to remove His presence from our lives, we must allow it. Not that He would truly be gone, but He might allow the feeling of relationship to go. Mother Teresa experienced this, this dark night of the soul, when one feels alone and lost, feeling abandoned by the One Person who promised to never leave us. It is like walking in the pitch black, having to take it on faith alone (which can be a rather flimsy thing) that the road one cannot see is truly before you, and you are not in actuality stepping off a cliff to fall 10,000 feet to one's death.
To say, "Your will, O Lord" is a frightening thing.
So is, "Use me, Lord".
The great Christian singer, Rich Mullins, once said this,
"God can use anybody. God used Nebuchadnezzar. God used Judas Iscariot. Its not a big deal to be used by God and the shocking thing in the book of Mark, and the reason why it is so shocking is because Mark is the briefest of all the gospels but he has these terrific little details, and one of the little details is that it says, "...and Jesus called to him those he wanted." And you realize that out of the twelve disciples that He wanted, only one was essential to His goal in coming to earth. The other eleven people were useless to Christ. And I kind of go, I would much rather have God want me than God use me."
Sometimes the whole "Christian" thing is just so beyond me, and I just go, "whatever"! Use me, want me, love me, lead me - just help me to do or be whatever it is You are wanting me to do or be. Then you have to just go and do it, and hope for the best!
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