The irony of life is that we all acquire people who bring little sense of personal happiness to us but who are catalysts for growth and out of which our own gifts come to life. The hard pill to swallow is that it is not for our joy; We MAY have a joy set before us, those glimpses of a heavenly vision are possible but not common in the regular grind of the noonday watch. Not for zealous sense of fulfillment in the doing, for you will be spent, worn out and finally broken...but not in a beneficial way ...No, these gifts are birthed in darkness, born like a child in the midst of loss. Authentic gifting' is identification with the Man of Sorrows. The words that were bound until another's pain released them, the inept hands that soothed the head that lay bowed. “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” Zelda Fitzgerald. We cannot take the sorrows if we look to others as the ends. We and they are means to honor God, to give and to gift without despair. And there is no genuine need for despair: I'm thankful that I do not serve a God of accidents but purpose and love. This reading by Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest came at the right moment for me today:
The Teaching of Disillusionment
Jul302012
Jesus did not commit Himself to them . . . , for He knew what was in man —John 2:24-25
Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life; it means being free from these deceptions. However, though no longer deceived, our experience of disillusionment may actually leave us cynical and overly critical in our judgment of others. But the disillusionment that comes from God brings us to the point where we see people as they really are, yet without any cynicism or any stinging and bitter criticism. Many of the things in life that inflict the greatest injury, grief, or pain, stem from the fact that we suffer from illusions. We are not true to one another as facts, seeing each other as we really are; we are only true to our misconceived ideas of one another. According to our thinking, everything is either delightful and good, or it is evil, malicious, and cowardly.
Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens— if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being something which he or she cannot possibly give. There is only one Being who can completely satisfy to the absolute depth of the hurting human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is so obviously uncompromising with regard to every human relationship because He knows that every relationship that is not based on faithfulness to Himself will end in disaster. Our Lord trusted no one, and never placed His faith in people, yet He was never suspicious or bitter. Our Lord’s confidence in God, and in what God’s grace could do for anyone, was so perfect that He never despaired, never giving up hope for any person. If our trust is placed in human beings, we will end up despairing of everyone.
