“Go to the land I will show you.” God to Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 12:1)
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Jesus to Nicodemus (John 3: 3).
Most of us are in the second half of life, and that requires different tools and different ways of doing things. Getting there can sometimes feel like a dismantling. Our lives have never been one continuous upward success. The actual journey of life starts with naïve simplicity and innocence that soon hits the potholes of life. There is no perfect job, perfect partner, perfect church, perfect government, perfect investment. We are confronted by things that do not go the way we want or insist. We have to learn to live with paradox. We are both saints and sinners. We have to learn that we can’t control and manage everything. We have to walk that fine line between owning our own mistakes, and not pushing the blame onto everyone else. We have to move beyond justifying ourselves all the time, to allowing God to justify us and have mercy on us. So we journey from naivete into complexity.
As we learn the mysterious art of letting God hold us, forgive us and be in control, there emerges a new possibility – the journey into deep simplicity or new innocence. It might well feel like a journey into ‘darkness’, because the old ways of running our lives may not work any longer. We are called into a journey of faith and trust. We discover that Jesus is with us, even though not always felt. We discover that Easter is real, because new life has come out of things that were dead and humanly hopeless. We learn to laugh more, with a healthy laughter. We discover the daily wonders that are around us every day. We learn to go with the flow, and become easier to live with. We learn to bless and encourage those around us.
