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March 10, 2004
tests, hurt, and harm
last night i was feeling really frustrated because i was having a difficult time understanding the homework i was working on. i was just lacking a few pieces of information here and there that was making progress near impossible. i also realized the urgency of the situation since i have two tests next week.
as i waiting for the bus to head home for the evening, i had very little peace about things. i just started thinking and praying. i realized that right now in my life i have two choices: serve God or myself. that may seem like a rather elementary revelation, but it especially seems that my life right now is so full of things, that if i do not take every single one first to God, it will all fall apart. right now i am being tested and refined as i never have before: it's go time.
so if you guys think to, prayer would be really appreciated. i am not asking for prayer that i do well in my classes or any particular outcome, but prayer that i would wholely submit my life to God.
on a slightly related note, here is a concept i have never heard before that comes to me out of the "boundaries" book i am reading (at least never expressed in this way). it deals with the difference between hurt and harm. i think a lot of times in our life when we feel pain, we do not distinguish between the two.
one illustration used in the book deals with going to the dentist. if you have a cavity, you go to the dentist to get it fixed. and that involves drilling. the dentist's intentions from the start are to hurt you, but there is no harm intended. as a matter of fact, the end result of is a good thing. hurt can cause good.
conversely, if you eat a piece of candy, does it hurt you? quite the contrary. candy is dang good stuff. but if you look at it long-term. the end result is really harmful. so the candy harms you, but does not hurt.
i think this really relates to how God interacts with us. while He at times hurts us, it is always to do something good in our lives. and his motivation is never to harm.
i am really liking this book.
Entry posted by byscuits on March 10, 2004 04:52 PM
Comments
that's great insight, and consistent with the sanctifying processes described in the bible.
Comment posted by ryan at March 10, 2004 05:07 PM
I have been reading, or rereading, Lewis's space novel "Perelandra" (which I found at a Joplin used-bookstore for a dime). You reminded me tangentially of the following passage:
"My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we call "good," But I was't sure whether I liked "goodness" so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose that you struggle through to the good and find it is also dreadful? How if food itself turned out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then indeed there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played. For a second or two I was nearly in that condition. Here at last was a bit of that world from beyond the world, which I had always supposed that I loved and desired, breaking through and appearing to my senses: and I didn't like it, I wanted it to go away. I wanted to put every possible distance, gulf, curtain, blanket, and barrier between it and me."
Here Lewis is describing the viscerallity of man's encounter with the Holy. The idea being that, that which is Holy, while always good, is not always "good" in the pale and tepid way that we imagine. Sometimes it is Holy with a frighteningly intense reality that burns us like white hot fire. So the the question before us is: which fire do we choose to burn in? The one that ends in our ultimate destruction (our disintegration into sub-beings or non-beings), or in that other equally painful fire which (we must assume on faith) will lead us to perfection and ultimate union with the Almighty?
Looked at another away, we are all sick men, and sometimes the medicine must drive us to the very brink of death before it enables us to become whole. If we would be whole again we must be willing to take whatever medicine the Good Physician prescribes for us.
On a side note, I want to be whole again someday, more than anything I have ever wanted in my life.
Comment posted by adam at March 10, 2004 05:45 PM
Thanks for sharing. I will pray for you. Cling to God. What you read makes sense.
Comment posted by GK at March 10, 2004 11:45 PM
