Eyes of love and Grace

We were chatting at Emmaus about our spiritual formation.  I know mine seems to be ever evolving and morphing.  There was a time many years ago, when I looked at my "walk with God" as given tasks to be "mastered" or Bible verses to be memorized, tasks to be honed like skills.  Almost a spiritual "to do" list that spiraled up and up toward God and when everything had been checked off, poof, I would be "Holy".

Well, that is what I thought before I crashed my life.

(While I have a desire to blog on the Holiness thing, that is not this blog, and in the interest in staying on point, I'll get back to my list of skills.)

It seemed a natural mindset, you know, to think the more knowledge and skill you attained of God, the more "Holy" one would become.  The fly in the pudding is that is there is an unavoidable measure of pride that gets into the mix.  Look what "I" have done, or God has blessed "me" with this finished list of tasks, verses, skills...etc.  It  lead in my own life to a form of spiritual Pharisee-ism, a one-up-man-ship game of how spiritual I am compared to the next guy.  There is within this mindset, a "look at me" attitude.  Never a good thing where God is concerned, I think.  As if my skills or ladder climbing matters one iota to God.  And it wasn't doing much in my own formation either.  The tasks became burdensome and heavy.  What if I didn't measure up?  What if I couldn't make the cut?  Judgement loomed heavy.  Someone was always higher on the ladder than I was.

And then my life crashed and I had to re-learn everything.  What unfolded for me was that I already was Holy because God looked at me through eyes of Love and Grace.  I didn't have the pressure of the spiritual to do list and I wasn't on the fast track to Holiness anymore.  I had to give up the appearances to settle into the reality.  For me, instead of an upward spiral full of tasks and burdens, my spiritual journey became a descending circle, deeper and deeper into the heart of God.  Here there were no lists, there was only an unveiling of myself, a giving up, if you will, of stuff I hung on to for far too long.  Each time I feel secure, another veil is lifted and I see yet another thing I have been carrying around. It feels safe, warm, freeing and intimate here.  It is a place where God shows me piece by piece what I am created to be and draws me to it.  There is no measure of another here.  It is the beginning of giving myself.

Somehow, I think I will continually be beginning.  I'm okay with that.

K