“The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah,
as they did at Massah in the wilderness.For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
even though they saw everything I did.For forty years I was angry with them, and I said,
‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me.
They refuse to do what I tell them.’
So in my anger I took an oath:
‘They will never enter my place of rest.’”Psalm 95 From the Bible
I was reading the above passage this morning from the Bible…
And I got thinking about it…
First I got thinking about it because it does not sound like the Papa I know and adore…
He is not one to get angry and keep people trapped outside of a land for 40 years just because they did not do what He said…
What of free will?
What of unconditional love?
This smacks of NONE of those things…
And it almost scares me to say this stuff out loud because I grew up believing in this confusing deity who could kill and destroy in one second and then be all love in the next second…
I had accepted it as truth for a long time…
Lots of people do accept it…
I (and they) grew up creating dynamic living God out of the words of a static book…
Instead of getting to know God and THEN interpreting the words of the static book from our living knowledge of Him…
Anyway, I finally gave myself permission to question these things that I had been told and taken on…
And to me, either Papa is unconditional love or He is not…
There is no middle ground where love chooses to send the loved to hell for all eternity if they step out of what can sometimes be an ever-changing line, dependent on what era and country you were born into…
That is like me choosing to send one of my princesses, that I CHOSE to give birth to ( no one forced me to get pregnant), away from home FOREVER to wander the streets because they did not obey my every little whim…
I would never do that and I am still learning how to love unconditionally
So, how can UNCONDITIONAL LOVE ITSELF do these things that we ascribe to Him?
Nope, I no longer buy it…
And though that is not the point I try to share with you today, it is part of my thought process as I wondered why this verse stood out to me this morning…
Particularly the last bit – ‘They will never enter my place of rest.’
Too many people seem to live outside of a place of rest (peace, fulfilment and so on… Is it a punishment?)
I know I do not have to read this bible book anymore (Papa is so much more interesting and living!) but I like it…
It does contain deep spiritual truths that Papa can speak to me through but you gotta look beyond the surface text…
Amd sometimes, you gotta wonder how much of it, is just people talking about their experiences…
Whichever way, this verse got my attention and I decided to think it over with Papa…
So, I ask Him directly…
“Was this you?
Did you really do that?”
And the answer that bubbles up within me is to look at my experiences of being fulfilled or not, being in a place of rest or not…
And I see how I could never relax into living the wrong life for me…
How I allowed myself to go bankrupt rather than keep doing the whole ‘being a pharmacist’ thing…
How I have always sabotaged everything that was not my purpose work even though I have made many things successful…
I could never seem to enter the Divine’s place of rest…
I kept feeling out of place in my own life
You could call it wandering in the desert when I could have just walked to my true home just across the road… (Incidentally, I once had a tenant who did exactly that – He had some mental issues, ended up wandering around at the bus stop forever even though his home was just up the road and I ended up having to take him to hospital to get the help he needed)
So then I wondered “Why did I keep wandering in the desert? Was it God keeping me from fulfilment?”
The answers that came to me were things like…
I lacked trust that I would be supported and safe if I lived out my vision…
I could not accept that I could live the life I was called to live because it seemed too impractical…
It seemed scary to do something so outside of my experience
And so I kept doing ‘acceptable, normal’ things, except they were not acceptable to my soul…
And so…
Fulfilment eluded me over and over and over again
I could see where I wanted to go…
I could have gone straight there
But I was scared
I did not trust that it could work
And so I wandered…
And I suppose if I was writing the Bible, I could tell you of crying out to the Divine for help
“When will you come save me, oh God?!”
I could talk of all the begging and pleading I did to try to feel better about staying stuck in a life that was not mine
But all the while, my own inner knowing KNEW this was not the path for me
I could never be satisfied
And I knew, deep down, that I could be satisfied if I would simply trust and move in the direction of my vision but hey ho, like most humans, I chose to wander in the wilderness of unfulfilment, trying to distract myself with religious activities, too much food, too much TV and so on…
Until I hit rockbottom.
Was that God’s fault?
Did He not answer my prayer?
Did He punish me?
Some would say God did it all for my own good and so therefore excuse God for being downright nasty to me? ( I don’t align with this anymore either!)
OR…
was it just me knowing that I could never be happy staying stuck in that life and so refusing to allow myself to rest into it?
Am I actually a lot more powerful than I think when it comes to the design of my life?
Do I get a lot more say over my life than I think?
Am I capable of self-sabotaging until I listen to my own soul?
I wonder…
Well, actually I don’t wonder
I KNOW
I could have successfully stayed living a life I hated but I would not have been fulfilled in it.
I would never have found peace and rest in it…
So now I am thankful that I am powerful enough to sabotage my attempts to passively live life telling myself some story about what I HAVE TO do to get by…
And then maybe even blaming Papa for it because it must be ‘His will’ or something…
NOPE… it was not God keeping me out of the promised land (fulfilment, happiness, peace) for 40 years (or in my case, it took me about 36 years of doing what I knew I did not want to do)
It was me.
And finally I surrendered to my own vision
To my own desires
And committed to making them come to pass
And I realised that I could have done this 20 years ago…
I could have done this from the start…
I CHOSE TO live in the wilderness
Just like the Israelites CHOSE TO live in the wilderness because they were scared of going after their promised land
But hey, it is always easier to blame God, I suppose
Please remember.
- Your vision is your permission.
- You are capable of your calling.
- You are much more powerful than you realise.
- Yes you can get everything you want.
- You are loved. You are enough. You are worthy. You deserve the very best of everything.
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Much Amazing Love
