In reality, what I think of as God making something happen...that I had been anticipating...was actually just one more step in a plan of His making all along. Events and milestones that are big and celebratory to me, are most likely the culmination of many other un-noticed events and milestones that are recognizable only by a calculating and calling God. God doesn't just see what I see as victories. I think He sees each step that I take with Him...following Him...as a victory for His Kingdom. After all...what is the goal of life? Success? Accomplishing my dreams? Or praying and accepting that God's dreams BECOME my dreams...that God's successes or Kingdom successes become my idea of success.
God's ideas of good are much different from what I have learned from my culture, my family and my world. In God's upside-down world, the first are last, and the last are first. The persecuted are the blessed and the poor will be made rich. The happy will be made sad, and the sad will be comforted. I pray for my enemies and for those who persecute me. I love those who try to kill me and I turn my cheek to accept another blow. I become defenseless, because I need no defense. No power can hurt me, because I am transformed from earthly being to heavenly body. I am no longer my own, but my God's. I am no longer free to be as I see fit, but I am slave to a God whose slavery is so much better than my own idea of freedom. And yet in this state of slavery, I am more free than I have ever been.
In God, through Christ, through His liberating love and sacrifice, I gain all the lasting treasures of true love. I loose everything so that I can gain the one thing that matters. And once I have it, I give it all away, freely. And strangely enough, as long as I freely give...I always have more than I need.
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