For this month’s edition of Prayer Corner, Kathy will be sharing with us on the mystery of God to learn to trust and depend on him when we don’t fully understand him.
March ’22: Mystery
By Kathy
Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. —1 Corinthians 13:12
Do you like solving puzzles? I find great satisfaction in being able to solve or understand something that is hard to tease out. I think it makes me feel clever and competent. Understanding how God works has been a lifelong puzzle for me. There are some things I know, like how He likes to surprise me with joyful packages of inspiration and beauty, and how I can distinguish His voice because it is always loving, even when He has to repeat Himself because I am slow to hear.
But with God, as many things as I get to know Him, there are always more mysteries. And I have learned to not try to solve them all. Instead, I find comfort in how my God is so big, that I don’t need to comprehend Him, so much as I need to trust Him.
In God there are many things that appear contradictory, but that can both be true at the same time. Here is one of them.
I am His child. I am at the beginning of my journey. I am very small, vulnerable, dependent, naïve, simple. As God’s child, He welcomes me into His arms and loves me for all that I am right now, even though I have done nothing of value. His warm smile, embrace and laughter, let me know I am His heart’s delight. He encourages me to remain childlike in the ways that reflect this loving, dependent relationship I have with Him.
Mandy Smith in Unfettered says:
- “to be a Christian is to be like a child, someone incomplete and open to outside guidance.”
- “As children we were able to engage in mystery with a spirit of adventure rather than domination, joining with open hearts in something we didn’t create…Being unfettered from our bondage to cultural habits…enmeshed with Western cultural habits…there are ways to return to those childlike habits, even in an adult life”
- “Children identify and engage as whole (thinking, feeling, sensing, embodied, relational) selves.”
- “Children know how to engage without taking on full responsibility” [because there is a loving Father always nearby to take care of all that].
Thank-you God, that I get to be your child; resting, receiving and responsive to what you are already doing.
I am a person living with one foot in this world and the other already gone. I have lived through much and I near the end of my journey. I have been tested, sometimes failing and sometimes persevering. I have been wicked and I have been a saint. I have learned and loved and been shown mercy beyond measure. I am a fool and I have gained wisdom. And I am still here with my God by my side.
Bill Gaultiere, in Journey of the Soul, puts it like this: [We are] “bi-habitational beings… [able to] persevere through great difficulties because [our] faith is not tied to the visible world but to knowing God in spiritual reality.”
And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, “What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.“
Thank-you God, that though I have lived through much and I grow weary of this world, I have the unwavering hope of spending eternity in joyful union with you.
I invite you to do one more thing, beyond just reading this prayer blog. Tell another believer or God himself, how you are like a child before Him. As a child, explain what you need and what you hope for. As a world-weary sojourner, tell another believer or God himself, what makes you tired of living this life, something that you have learned, and something that you look forward to in the next life.
And then rest secure, Dear Child/End of Life-One. You are fully known and fully loved just as you are.