The wrestle

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voscamp

It is so good.  It speaks to the depths of how I feel, struggle and wrestle with my own humanity and the things of God.  

"You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are.  You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemis-though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God and yet God's beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.   Blasphemer!  What compels me to name these moments upheavals and annoyances instead of grace and gift?  Why deprive myself of joy's oxygen?  The swiftness and starkness of the answer startle.  Because you believe in the power of the pit. Really? (I love wickedness) Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love?  That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus' way? Why else get angry?  Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want?  When I choose -and it is a choice- to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness?  Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective- more expedient- than giving thanks?    This daily joy struggle, above all, it is a Jacob-wrestle to see God in the faces we face."  

I was the biggest blasphemer in the room last night.  Although I thought it was them.  Anger poured out of me over injustice to another and all the while I was doing the very thing to them that they had done to the youngest one.  She had a need, to be cared for when hurt, they mocked and showed no concern.   They had a need also, to deny self and have love, and I mocked and showed no concern.  Only that they do what I think is best.  Only that they "see" from the great angry outburst.  They cannot see apart from the grace to see.  Love makes us see, wrath is not what we get from God so that we can see, it was love.  Love.  

Hagar called God the God who sees me.  Then she forgot.   I know He is the God who sees me but I forget too.  It is the giving of thanks that causes me to remember.  

Father, thank you for the cross grace for yesterday and for today and for tomorrow.  Thank you for the struggle that causes me to wrestle with truth and find you there always.  Help me to see today, Grace is what I want, joy and thanksgiving, give me strength to choose Joy above the way of the fall.  Help me to see you..in the midst of this desert, to see the well that is right before my eyes and to drink of the water rather than thirst and die.  In Christ's name I pray, Amen.