Slideshow image

There is a saying, “God made humans in His image and we have been returning the favour ever since.”  Often we wish for a God we can understand, anticipate, even on somedays control.  But that is not the God we have.  Our God is free and sovereign, and is and does as He decides is best.  Today, with Walter Brueggemann, we wrestle with this, affirming still that God’s ways are good and that, amazingly, this God we might not have chosen has indeed chosen us!

Not the God we would have chosen

We would as soon you were stable and reliable.
We would as soon you were predictable
    and always the same toward us.
We would like to take the hammer of doctrine
    and take the nails of piety
    and nail your feet to the floor
    and have you stay in one place.
And then we find you moving,
    always surprising us,
    always coming at us from new directions.
Always planting us
        and uprooting us
        and tearing all things down
        and making all things new.
You are not the God we would have chosen
    had we done the choosing,
    but we are your people
    and you have chosen us in freedom.
We pray for the great gift of freedom
    that we may be free toward you
    as you are in your world.
Give us that gift of freedom
    that we may move in new places
    in obedience and in gratitude.
Thank you Jesus
    who embodied your freedom for all of us.  Amen.

(Poem from: Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, Edited by Edwin Searcy, Fortress Press Minneapolis 2003. page 87.)

May God’s blessing be upon you today,
Dianne