H,
Well, you are absolutely
right about the response. It will all mean nothing if it brings no real
response from us. I am only careful that we do not respond in fear to things we
do not fully understand.
God is such a full being
that any response will be in faith and not in knowledge. Yet I feel the basic
idea must be there. There has to be a meeting of spirits. You have to agree
that you are missing something in the first place. For you and me it is easy
now. We have played that game and lost. We cannot be fake anymore. We would
rather just go home. This is only half the story, though. There are many things
and times we still fake. There are places in ourselves we do not show to
anyone, even to each other. Growing up on earth seems to be more a case of
keeping your own counsel and putting your best foot forward. Revealing tiny
bits of your soul to a select few but never the whole picture.
It is this duality that God
is always pushing up against. He wants us to start talking about it in prayer. In
the end, they will probably be nothing we cannot dare to talk about in the
public space. It will be God’s space and nothing will be hidden from anyone. Is
that too much to think of? Think of self as a lifelong prison. We are only
scared of the outside because we do not know what it is to be truly free.
For now we will struggle
with this over and over again. The secrets and lies and recriminations of a
conscience stained by the accuser and used by him to lead us to more misdeeds. We
have to give our secrets up to God daily.
Then, and only then, will we
find peace and freedom, love and grace, fullness and a life more awake than we
could have ever imagined in our sleepy state of sin.