Sunday, June 17, 2018

On a personal note...

While I theologize all day long, preoccupied as my mind is with this stuff, my personal life is a wreck. Don't get me wrong, comparatively I've got it pretty good so this may sound like whining (and it is probably a sign of being ungrateful) but it is my reality.

Choices made years ago - literally - are still impacting in a very real way our lives today. Drowning in debt. Ok, maybe not drowning, but debt enough that home repairs are a luxury and we are in the hoping (as in 'the house doesn't cave in') to be able to afford to do so in the future.

School loans looming larger than the amount owed on our home.

Retirement? What is that?

Grandchildren's education?

While we are sustaining that is what it is: we are sustaining and in that regard have it good.

So while this theology is a pursuit of truth whether it is wrestling with to overcome lack of belief or if it is trying to find a voice for that which I believe my hope is that while this pursuit is happening it is impact, in a greater way, the reality in which I live.

This is where hope comes in, not in the sense of a 'future heaven' (which, by and large, is a cartoon version of the Biblical witness for most) where all our problems will be gone but in the sense of a get out of self and do for others mode, allowing the cares of this world, self-created or other, to be secondary on our minds, to cease worrying and to allow our heavenly Father to provide these things for us as He does for the birds of the field.

Sounds great, right? 

And if in my head I am finding peace, am I finding peace in my heart? Or have I, as has been my historical record, safeguarded my heart with an intellectual block, protecting rather than surrendering it?

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