Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Why the Devil Wants You to Think You Are In Control


Sometimes we are angry because we are sad.
“I’m feeling angry, darling, and I don’t know why.”
Instead of finding a convenient target for our anger,
Just stop, connect with the truth, and sigh.
This is what God has taught me,
When life is wrong beyond belief,
To accept that it is what it is,
The truth is the source of relief.
***
Despite what you may think, you are not in control of your life.
And neither am I. None of us are. We all go about our lives as if we are in control, that is, until we or a loved one is struck down with cancer or we lose a job or we find ourselves so far in debt that all hope disappears.
The Devil wants us to think we are in control. So successful is he in using our flesh desires against us, together with the world and all its enticing temptations, we almost cannot help thinking we are in control.
When we think we are in control and life comes at us the opposite way it causes us to be angry, because we are sad. And we don’t even know why we are angry – we just are. Normally those in our way would need to watch out!
We are not in control as much as we thought we were.
In moments such as these, when we are inexplicably cross, which is simply a mask for sadness, we do best to call things as they are – to side with the truth of matters, notwithstanding the harshness of reality.
As soon as we side with the truth of matters we find ourselves face-to-face with the gruesome reality: we are not in control. And though we might think it would be a confounding reality, at our end is God’s beginning.
When we are ready to give up living our lives as if we are in full control, God is equivalently ready to help us onward the journey of acceptance.
When we have reached the land of acceptance, having swum against the current all our lives, and we are sick and tired of being sick and tired, we just simply sigh and rest in the irresolvable and tenuous situation. We find space in the horridness of it by taking the safety of God with us. Having come face-to-face with the truth of our reality we are brought to one option only; we must simply accept it. Acceptance is a thing practiced in the moment.
***
Acceptance is the key to mature living of life where we bear truth and reality just as it is. There is no secret formula. Just hard work. But hard work pays off in this: our experience is buoyed by resilience, which is the compensation we receive having practiced acceptance.
As soon as we understand we are not in control, we are inspired to be grateful for what we have.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

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