Monday, January 30, 2012

A bundle of paradoxes!

"When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and I get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty..."
Brennan Manning, "Reflections for Ragamuffins"

I was so relieved to read this! I feel exactly the same way! Sometimes, I feel like two completely separate people living in one body. But I realized that scripture is full of paradoxical people like me. The guy who said to Jesus, "I believe, help my unbelief!" Now, there is a guy I can identify with! And the brothers who were told by their father to go work in the vineyard. The one brother said, sure, he'd go, but didn't go and the other brother who said he didn't want to go, but did. Human beings are full of paradoxes...we seem to be wired that way. Brennan Manning goes on to say, "To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life's story, the light side and the dark." And then he quotes Thomas Merton, "A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God." It is so not about us and what we do and don't do. It is all about God and his amazing gifts to his paradoxical people! Love, heidi

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