hands

I don't know what a post like my previous one is doing on the internet.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it helps anyone to read stuff like that.  It may help me, and perhaps that is all it was... a cry for help.  But we are to speak only what is helpful for building others up, according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.  I interpret "speak" to mean "communicate" and thus apply it to blogging.  On the other hand, we are also commanded to confess our sins to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave us.  (Forgive me if I'm miss-quoting.  I'm working from memory and I'm too lazy to pull up BibleGateway).  So, it makes sense for us to unload our crap to each other one-on-one or in a small group setting.  But to do it impersonally, on the internet?  Not sure what to think about that.  Perhaps I was wrong to do it.  I'm not going to worry about it though, as it's over and done, and worry is just more useless sin.  In any case, it came out through my fingers in the spirit of free convection.

Regarding that post and my feeling of running from silence and God, I was given appropriately direct advice from a friend.  Basically, the point is that I need to stop whining about life and go do what I know I need to do.  Get alone with God and talk to him.  The particular wording of the admonition left me with a powerful image that I must now share.

Take yourself in hand and require yourself to do what you know you must: get alone with God.

That phrase, "take yourself in hand" really hit me.  At first I wanted to scoff at it.  It's impossible to hold oneself in one's own hand.  Just try to picture it:  all of me fitting into my own hand.  But my own hand is part of me, and must somehow fit within itself.  As I began to try to reconcile this, the image in my mind became two mes instead of one.  One, very small me, running away, and one large me, grabbing him.  If any of you have played a Roller Coaster Tycoon game, you know the picking up that I imagined.  This image requires that the me who wants to obey is much bigger and stronger than the me who wants to keep running.  In my estimation, that's not really the case, or I wouldn't be where I am.  But it is the case that we have a God who is much bigger, that his Spirit lives within the me that needs to do the taking of the other me in hand.

So that I am about to do.  At least, I am going to go be silent, and wait for God.  Perhaps I'll tell you how it goes, perhaps something else will convect from my fingers when I next sit to write.