Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Week Twenty-One - Tangled and Muddled


     Let me introduce you to Marjorie Wilkinson.  Marjorie lived in the early part of the 1900s.  Her writings are more like musings about motherhood, housework, and faith in an honest, sincere way while engaging with the disappointments and difficulties she faces. 
     My friend dug out several books by this author amid the forgotten religious books for absolute pennies in her nearby bookstores.  We both jump for joy when we find another Marjorie book!  Sad to see them so discounted, because they are truly filled with precious jewels of thought.    
     In her book, One Thing I Know, I found many gems to share with you along the way, but for today, I want to refer to one chapter, The Scarlet Cloak.  Here, she mentions her mother’s long illness and how it taught her to gain strength by drawing aside and renewing her courage even at a young age.  She alludes to a book by a man named Stevenson called The Celestial Surgeon and what he called the “great task of happiness.”  I want to find that book!
     Anyway, Marjorie writes, “I realize that to stand up to life, with all my senses fully awake and eager to be used, I need to have my thoughts, feelings, and will rooted in God’s will, and to believe wholeheartedly in His plan for my life…When I am apt to forget that I am able to conquer through Christ, the enemies of my peace—fear, ignorance, and inertia in particular—form tangles in my thinking.  A sense of guilt emerges from the muddle.  Only fresh surrender of my petty self can make way for the larger self that is awaiting life.  Then, and then only, will the enemies of destructive emotionalism—anger and resentment—be turned into the open sea of usefulness and accomplishment.” (p 70)
     That’s a huge quote – sorry.  Let me go back and pull out some of her phrases that caught my attention and warrant our thought. 
     “To stand up to life”—wow!  That takes some backbone.  It’s so much easier to let life just ride roughshod over us or hid behind our door. 
     “With senses fully awake and eager to be used” – What?  I am to face life ready to serve?  Ready to give?  That requires a lot of energy and self-sacrifice.
     “Thoughts, feelings, and will rooted in God’s will and to believe wholeheartedly in His plan for my life”—amazing!  I see the need for my will rooted in God’s will and believe He has a plan for my life, but my thoughts and feelings also rooted in His will?  What would that look like? 
     Then, she talks about the ability to conquer through Christ and relates fear and ignorance to forming tangles in our thinking.  I like that little phrase – “tangles in our thinking”. 
     Oh, how often I feel tangled in my thinking.  How often I find myself needing a good talking to in order to maintain peace!  But when she related these same qualities to inertia, I was thrown into more thought. 
     Inertia?  I always thought of that as an action that moved things, like the power behind a rocket, but when I looked up the meaning, I found: “I
nertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion (this includes changes to its speed, direction or state of rest). It is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at constant velocity.  To put it simply, inertia is a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.” (Wikipedia)
     When you put that together you get the attitude of resisting change, resisting anything that would alter the status quo, stubborn resistance.  And she says this is an enemy of peace in her life.  We think no change brings peace, but she is saying resisting change disturbs peace.  Exactly! 
     God is working in us to create change – to make us more like Christ.  When we stubbornly resist, we create disturbance – become an enemy of peace!  Now, what do you think about that?  Tangles your thinking, doesn’t it?  And the guilt you feel from that constant resistance leaves you in a muddle because though you know God wants to create Christlikeness within you, you are stubbornly resisting the work of the Holy Spirit.
     Marjorie’s solution is to accept that fact that it’s time for that “fresh surrender” of your “petty self” so the larger you God is creating, the one that is awaiting abundant life can be “turned into the open sea of usefulness and accomplishment.”  I love to sail those seas!  Don’t you?
     God doesn’t want his children tangled and muddled.  He wants them ready to stand up to life with every one of their senses in submission to Christ.  He wants to create His work in their lives in order to give them a fruitful and blessed life.  Makes me wonder why we stubbornly resist.  Any ideas?


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