“Although the world is full of suffering,
it’s full also of the overcoming it.”
— Helen Keller (1880–1968)
An all-conquerable truth stands eternally;
Christ has overcome this world! This is power and hope for life and nothing—not
one bit—less.
Living in this world can make us
feel as a pariah; even as it seems a joke of a reality that is too coarse for our
existential consumption; just too painful. That or it is wondrous for all we might experience. Of course, there is the
middle-ground, but why would we not have it all when we could have it?
There are at least three tangible
ways we live this wondrous all-conquerable reality:
1.
Thinking without limit: when we consider the true testament of life
in its comprehensive sense we acknowledge how expansive it is in both joy and pain. There truly is no limit to it. When we
broaden our thinking commensurately, we experience the Spirit broadening our
perspective in many different ways. We allow the Lord to cause our thinking to
blossom; we grow in the things of virtue and vice-like thinking shrinks,
because love is bigger—much bigger—even too big—than the shrinking and
strangling fear that compels us to sin. Thinking without limit is giving over
our will and our lives to the Lord our God.
2.
Feeling without regret: suffering tends to bring with it the
consequence of regret. When we see that we have the resources in this
world—God-anointed resources—to feel everything we can feel, entirely without
regret, we instigate the deployment of those resources and we learn to look
ever forward. This is no denial for what is gone. No, we glory in the losses of
a bygone day, for it is (and was) the defining of us. To feel as God has always
willed us to feel is a glorious experience. It is freedom and it is the
magnitude of heaven, but we must first agree to surrender our will and go on a
journey of healing—a journey that never ends in this life.
3.
Living without fear: both these above contribute to living a life
that is fear-free. There is one perfect fear we are to invest in—the fear of
God—which simply compels us to endure all the struggles given us in God’s
Almighty name for the glory of the Lord. To live without fear is to live free
to love. It is a life free from regret, despite the regrettable and regretful.
And living without fear is helped by the fact that we are expansive thinkers;
fear just isn’t our way any more.
***
Because Christ has overcome the
world we can think without limit, feel without regret, and live without fear.
The all-conquerable truth is we have power when we access it. It is there and
it is real. We go to God and we are being healed.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment