Sunday, May 9, 2010

God's Okay

Frederick Buechner, writer and theologian, wrote something along the lines of this - before the Gospel is Good News, it's Bad News. The bad news is that it is not about us; our opinions, our triumphs, our failures, our plans, our anything. Okay, that's the bad news. The world does not revolve around us. Get over it.
 
Now for the good news. The Gospel is about us. The real us. The one we spend much of our life ignoring. The "us" God took great pains to make, literally loving us into existence. The "us" who God forgave when we rejected his Son so we could keep the conversation about us. The "us" God empowered by raising the "best" death we could conceive from the dead. Our destiny is assured.
 
So what? Well, for one, we can quit trying so hard to get ahead, to impress each other and ourselves. We can relish the persons we are - unique, if not slightly odd - flawed but totally forgiven - invincible, even if fragile. God turned what we saw as reality back on its feet (we were standing on our heads, the blood rushed there and made us weird.)
 
The Rev. Dr. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse said to me once, " I'm not okay, you're not okay, but that's okay." Why? Because God is okay.
 
I hope you have a Good day by rejecting the Bad one you planned and by embracing the one God has in store for you. Surrender. Resistance is not only futile, it's just dumb.

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