A: Drop the shovel.
I would like to tell you about the last couple weeks; but in this short space I cannot fit it all here. I will give the best of it and if you want the rest you will have to look me up!
During the third week of March, I was reading through the book of Jeremiah. I came to the complaint sections of Jeremiah. If you don’t know much about the book of Jeremiah, he has a couple sections of him complaining to God about the trials in his life. As I studied them I found some really interesting stuff. A couple minutes of meditation in Jeremiah 12 led me to pray about this section. During that prayer the pride that had taken over my life reared its ugly head as I began to thank God that I was not like Jeremiah; arrogant and questioning of God. Jeremiah’s arrogance had shown up in his questioning God’s justice and God rebuked him. My arrogance showed up without the mask of justice and conversation with God. The audacity of my prayer life is absolutely exquisite. It was then that God laid the hammer on me. Pride and arrogance let me ruin relationships and hurt a lot of the people that I come into contact with regularly. The pride in what I did and accomplished, had ruined the joy I found in it. Pride stood in the way of promising relationships and any hope of a intimate relationship with God. The realization (shown by God that fateful morning) of the toxicity of my arrogance and hubris set me on the path to a lot of humbling conversations and many more to come. These discussions have been at times awkward; at times intimidating; but every time liberating! Now I have this last thing to say: “You, Church, deserved better from me.” One more difficult to type statement; but liberating! God's work in our lives is never complete. I am thankful for a God who points out our shortcomings and works with us through them! A God of so much Grace is he!
