I have plans for your future...

Continuing the thought from yesterday, that God finds me beautiful. I think we (or I) too often forget just how much I mean to God. I get so involved in trying to find God, please God, live for God, that I lose sight of how wonderfully made I am!

And yet, remember that I am precious to God, that God finds pleasure in me, that I am fearfully, wonderfully made, this remembrance brings such deep peace and joy. How can I forget that to God, I am unique? How can I fail to remember words of Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." 

We so often worry about how to approach God. And yet, according to scripture, God is already in our heart. As we read in Luke 17:21, Do you not know, the kingdom of God is within you?

And I would add, God wants us to believe, "you are so beautiful...to me."

Finding the Beyond

For the last two days, this hymn keeps replaying over and over in my mind. I heard it a couple weeks ago at a funeral. Yet it wasn't until Monday evening that it began to replay in my mind, over and over again, until I wondered what was going on! Then I heard Tuesday  readings of the Good Shepherd, and realized my soul is totally in sync with the liturgy!

The hymn starts Shepherd me O God, beyond my wants, beyond my needs, from death into life. We are all familiar with psalm 22, The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I should want. The hymn goes one step further. It prays we go beyond our wants and needs, seeing the Shepherd as the true life. I like this interpretation because it admits we have needs and that they do need attending to, that they are valid. To deny human needs is to portray Christianity as some form of asceticism that denies the true human condition. And God knows, that is disastrous.

Faith and trust in God does not negate; it fulfills. That is a truth we need to hold on to. Perhaps the centuries of monastics have made one believe that to truly love and serve God requires a radical separation from all that is normal, from all that is human, from all that can be desired in this life. But nothing could be further from the truth.

We are all called to a life that is lived with spiritual awareness and mature understanding of human needs. And to prove it, the psalmist wrote Even when I walk through a dark valley, I fear no evil for you are at my side. A spiritual life isn't about going without, it is about going beyond to that which is at our side.

Reading the Psalms

If you are ever in need of inspiration, open up the book of psalms and start reading. In there you will find  a whole array of human emotions, from joy to anger, hope to despair, gratitude to questioning God and his ways.

I'd like to share what I read this morning from psalm 91: You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, Say to the Lord, "My refuge and fortress, my God in whom I trust."

I love the image of abiding in the shadow of the Almighty. It implies being so close to God that you are never farther away than a shadow can throw, and you are there "abiding" meaning, that's your regular spot. That image reminds me how as kids we tended to stay close to mom or dad, just because it felt safer. We sensed if they were close, nothing bad could happen to us.

Abiding also implies sensing a presence. For us mortals, that sense has to be a gut sense, an intuition, an awareness of something not seen. Becoming aware of God makes us also aware of the spiritual. And that leads us into a whole new realm of life.

I'd love to know what psalms you opened to this morning, and your thoughts on them.