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That’s what faith is to me, a grand adventure of the soul, at times exhilarating, at times disappointing. Sort of what Chesterton was saying. Faith is not the surrender of the mind, as some have characterized it, but the expansion of it, and of the heart and spirit as well. It is head-scratching, yes, weird at times, nonsensical, but also brilliant and moving in its simplicity and in the good it succeeds in doing.
“Pay attention to yourself. Life is about our willingness to change and take risks, and we get those cues from our hearts and our intuition. Likewise, and this is just as important, pay attention to your overreactions: when someone gets under your skin, ask yourself why that is. What have they stirred up? That
“Find a quiet place, close your eyes, and listen for God. That’s it. Some people will rave about a new book about prayer like it’s a bestseller, but you don’t need that.”
God, not the church (any church) is the goal. Or to put it more crudely: if God is the destination, churches are the gas stations along the route. Then again, to some, God is the destination and churches are the bureaucratic city works department that erects roadblocks and sends you on frustrating detours that eventually force you to throw up your hands and say, “Oh, to hell with it; there’s got to be a better route.” As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once opined, people come to church in a spirit of hope and openness but leave as if they’ve staggered from a maze of mind-boggling bombast.
Here’s the thing about prayer: It doesn’t require fancy words, or a theology degree. It doesn’t even require you to be articulate on any level. Sometimes my own prayers are so scrambled and banal that I wonder whether God thinks English is my second or third language. But therein lies the beauty of it. Vocal articulation is unnecessary. You can sit in silence and sputter out your thoughts telepathically.
God turns up in the silence. He doesn’t come when we expect or as we expect, and when He does, He gives us more than we can control or handle. That’s probably why we so often avoid silence: we fear losing control.
