If you’ve ever placed an order like this, I can relate. Recently at work there was a cafaffle about a locked door. The fact that the printer was behind it was most of the trouble, the reasons of which are largely inconsequential, and I needed to use that printer. Imagine having to waste the time it takes to unlock a door, purposelessly, a hundred times a day to get anything off the printer when you’re doing casework and have to get things off the printer all the time, constantly, ad nauseum, ad infinitim. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it? Probably isn’t; Not the point. The point IS that come Monday morning this week, after doing this for about two months, I had Had Enough. I was livid and decided to act like a child. I purposely went in and UNlocked the door at every opportunity hoping that it would stay that way, and when that didn’t work, I just left it standing open. I figured  two could play that whole Drive-Someone-Crazy-About-Something-As-Inane-As-A-Locked-Door Game (What? You’ve never played that one?). I fumed and complained and made a real jerk of myself.

But then something happened. A coworker of mine who was the dumping ground for my vitriol did something that absolutely changed my perspective and my attitude: She prayed for me. I didn’t know it at the time. I had gone outside for a minute to take a break from my rage with a book that just happened to be in my purse called Forgotten God, which is about being guided by the Holy Spirit. Ouch, by the way. And as I read, I thought, Is this Love I’m acting with? Or Selfishness?

And it occurred to me that I was angry because I didn’t have a choice about the way things were being run in my office, but I was being offered a choice about how I was going to run things in my heart and how that heart was reflected in my actions. And I decided I was going to submit to God and run it right, in a way that would please Him and make me, as His representative, be honorable to the great gifts I’d been given, like having the Holy Spirit to dwell within me and guide me. Like having a job, like having the capabilities to work it, like having the income it provides me to support myself, like having all the luxuries in life that make it not only possible but to seem even justifiable to complain. I realized that I couldn’t do anything about the yoke, but I could carry it with dignity and the grace befitting someone who professes Jesus as Lord.

So as I was saying earlier, if you want a life with No Yokes? Good luck finding anyplace that can fill that particular order. But if you care about your heart really, you will (as I am still continuing to) learn to bear them with courage, humilty, and above all else, Love.

So I’ve been blue and mopey. I’ve been whiny and inconsolable. And, I’ve been desperate and unhappy.

I am SO lame.

Understandable? Sure. Justified? Debatable. But righteous? I doubt it.

This morning I had breakfast with my grandparents. And with my grandfather ill, my gramma explained to me that she’s had about all she can handle. And I thought to myself, I can be of some use to her. I can minister to her as I’m waiting. I’m so daft sometimes, thinking that ministry and missions have to always be Over There Somewhere, when there are people with needs not only right down the street but in my own family. And there is a peace in that because there is direction in it. So maybe I don’t flee the country sometime soon. Maybe for the moment I’m needed here.

God’s plan is not always (read: ever) what I think it will be. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is absolutely Good. Not necessarily what I think would be good, not always what I would ask for myself. Not even what is “good” for me in this moment, but the Ultimate Good. There is something so comforting in that, and it is in comfort that I learn more and more to trust Him. There is something so humbling in that, and it is in humility that I learn how better to praise the God who was and is and is to come.

I am happy. For now. But more importantly, I feel joy.

There’s really no need to go. The only reason that I’m even contemplating it is because I’m disappointed. How, you may ask? And I answer, In myself.

Not that I’ve done anything that is overly awful, but sometimes, can’t that be the worst? This sort of uneasy feeling follows me around asking me if I’ve really done all that I could. I can’t pin it to anything in specific necessarily. I haven’t been out sacrificing virgins or burning down symbolic representations of capitalism. I’ve just been lazy and undisciplined. I’ve just nonchalantly given up all the progress God’s made in me without a second thought or any real notice.

And then I lazily pick up a copy of the Confessions of St. Augustine, and I remember who I was when last I read it. And it was a different person, and one who felt and believed and held firm. I still believe but my resolve has turned squishy. And yet I still have thought I was at the point of great return, when I was investing nothing, or certainly not enough.

I want to be marked as God’s. I want there to be an indeliable sign on my life that says, She has been granted knowledge of absolute truth and it did not fall on deaf ears. I want to be more and less, more of God and drained out of myself. C.S. Lewis says that as we come to know more of God and sacrifice all that we are to him, we become more and more our true selves. I believe it. Now I just have to act like it.

There seems to me to be a piece of everything that’s happened in everything that came before. Nothing simply appeared. If I hadn’t gone to a sleepover in seventh grade at the house of a girl I didn’t know very well. If I hadn’t been at a certain Bible study my first week of college. If that other boy hadn’t been bitter, if she hadn’t thrown me that surprise 20th birthday party. It was all so tenuous. It could have all turned out differently. But it didn’t. And this evidence reminds me that God’s plan is sometimes interwoven so by little things that it may seem at times as though nothing at all is happening. But then something will happen, like a couple offering to raise your child and give her the home that you would have wanted for her, and looking back, all the steps will come together.

And this is what I need to keep sight of.

I am contemplating what to do. I feel sometimes like I’m just sitting on my hands, and in reality, sometimes I am. But there is a time when one needs to be still. Be still and know that I am God, he says. Be still, let peace overcome you. Be still, I’m still working even when you don’t see it. Be still, stop your thrashing.

The Lord is so providential. He has seen all things and known all things, paid the penalty for all things, and still retains such patience for me. He knows all of my screw ups, not just for today but for the rest of my life and still he gives me the opportunity to screw up, to recognize my errors, to learn, to grow, to come to lean on him more fully. The wiser I become, the more I recognize that I have no wisdom but that which is imparted to me by my father. The stronger I become, the more I know that my own strength leads me into temptation. The more I am made aware of who I am in God, the more I recognize that I am nothing but a vessel. The joy in those lessons seems nihilistic.

I don’t feel as filled with the spirit as I used to. I don’t mention this to imply that devotion should be based on feelings. I mention it because the time when I have felt the most fervently devout, the most concretely spiritual , the most rapturously in love, was in the summer and early fall of last year. My mother’s health was failing and I was able to share with her some of the good work God was doing in me, some of the gifts and blessings of understanding that he was giving me. At hospice, I was blessed to be able to read scripture to her and pray over her. I prayed over her for what seemed like hours (and may have been) the night before she died. Had it have been a year earlier, I don’t know that I would have done that. Not that I didn’t believe in prayer and Scripture at that time. Only God had not brought me so close before then. And I wonder if he gave himself more fully to me then so that I might be able to conduct his comfort to her.

Of course, I don’t know the full purpose of God. Of course, there may be some other and more pressing reason that God chose to bring me to himself just then. I don’t know when he may use whatever I am or have been or will be to bring glory to himself. But that idea of myself as conductor, as tool, that absence of myself in that conversation resonates within me as something so lovely and divine. That God might use me to help someone else.

So I have to learn to not be so egotistical. I need to not have an ego at all. I need to not ask, How does this benefit me? I need not to ask even, How does this benefit my ministry? I need to trust in God, honestly seeking him, honestly asking him to grow me however he may see fit, in whatever manner he devises, and know that he is working all of this to his greater glory and to the fulfillment of his purpose. Though he slay me, I will yet praise him. That’s it.

And of course, that sounds like a really really good thing that I could totally get behind. I mean, encouraging believers to get off their keesters and start doing something for the Kingdom of God? Beautiful. Wonderful. And bringing those acts to light for the rest of the Body to witness? Encouraging. Inspiring. Three years ago I would have immediately linked to their site, ordered the DVD, read all of their organization-related literature, and have already set about making homemade Tshirts with their name and slogan on them in sloppy handwriting. I’d have driven my sister crazy by beginning all my sentences with “The people at Broken Voices say. . . ” and my brother to distraction by ending all my explanations with “. . . at least that’s what they say at Broken Voices.” But I find myself changed. I’m much slower in my patronage.

I’ll freely admit that I probably have not learned enough about the entirety of this site to critique it with a great deal of authority. I have not been to a “Your Life Matters” seminar,  I have not had a “home screening”. But I notice something missing that I think is key in any sort of movement that purports God as it’s inspiration: a belief system.

I don’t mean to grouse about this organization in particular. I don’t know that it is especially absent a statement of faith more than any other of the same type. I use it as an example. The views expressed seem to indicate a group that is proactive and aspiring,  one that wants to introduce people to a higher purpose, and to try and make the world a better place. But I wonder, Is that really our ultimate goal? Is that really what God asks?

Serving others is a blessed thing, and a difficult one. Trying to improve the world that we live in, which is so rife with turmoil and tragedy is a noble aspiration. Assisting others in recognizing that they have been specifically equipped of God with a plan in mind is comforting and empowering. But none of these things get to the root of why we are here and what our actual purpose is. The purpose of our lives is to serve God and keep his commandments (1). And the reason we do this is not to serve other people, although by doing these things, we will.And it isn’t to make the world a better place, although it does. And it isn’t to let people know that there’s a reason why they’re here, although there is. The reason that we are here and equipped and set about the tasks and gifted with the talents of our lives is merely to bring glory to the name of God (2).

It’s a difference in perspective. It’s an alteration of motivation. It seems like something that need not even be explained because it should be implied. But unless it is explained, it can’t be assumed.

(1). Ecc. 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

(2.) Matt 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.

II Thess. 1:11-12 Therefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I Pet. 4:11 If any man speak, let him speak according to the oracles of God. If any man minister, let him do it according to the ability which God giveth, that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

I Cor. 10:31 Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.