Microwave Spirituality
Some years ago I came into our living room to find my daughter sitting with her elbow on the sofa arm, cheek resting on her fist, short legs sticking straight out in front of her. She looked troubled. When I asked what was wrong, she said, “This is one frustrated seven-year-old you’re looking at here.” Of course I asked why.
“I don’t know why God made me. I don’t know what I am supposed to do with my life. And when I think about that, I get really frustrated.” (She has always been a deep thinker.)
I answered, “That’s a really serious question, but it’s not one that I can answer for you, and it’s not one you have to answer today. That’s a question only God can help you answer.”
“So how does God talk to you?”
“Well, God speaks to me through the pastor when he preaches, and through other Christians, and through books that I read, sometimes through ideas I have that won’t go away. But the most important way God speaks to me is through the Bible.”
“Which parts?”
I mentioned several passages that guide me, concluding with, “But I think the verse that God uses most to help me with this is Philippians 1:6.”
“Can we go read it now?”
So we sat in the middle of my bed as I read to her, “[God] who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ
understood it, she said tentatively, “I’m not sure.”
“I think it means that all our lives God is going to be working on us to make us who we are supposed to be, and God may still keep working on us, even in eternity after we die and are with God.”
“So what you’re saying is, this is going to take a while?”
That is exactly what I was saying. And it is not a very satisfying answer when we realize — yet again — that we are not who God dreams us to be. Along with instant potatoes and microwave meals, we often want instant answers and instant spiritual growth. Though God is in this matter of spiritual life for the long haul, we often take another view. We’d like a clear statement of what God wants us to do. We’d like a prepared spiritual-food package that we can pull out and zap for instant spiritual growth when we have a few minutes to spare. Formulas for spiritual living appeal because they seem to make the process simple. However, just as one-size-fits-all is a lie when it comes to clothes, it is a lie in the spiritual life too.
To be honest, it would have been comforting to me and to my daughter if I could have told her exactly what God wants for her life, where she will end up, and how long it will take to get there. But I am not God, and I did not know how God would draw my daughter along in her spiritual journey. I don’t even know what God has in mind for me!
The spiritual life is not about easy answers and instant progress. Each of us is a continuing project for God. First Corinthians 3:9 calls us “God’s field.” Every field is different, and every plant within a field is different than every other. The soil in one field may need more nitrates in order to produce good fruit; the soil in another may need more calcium. Those who tend their fields well also allow fallow times when the soil rests, when no seed is planted. It may seem that nothing is happening, but the soil is being renewed for future fruitfulness. A field may also grow different cropsat different times, depending on the plans of the farmer and the needs of the community. We are God’s field, God’s garden, and God faithfully and lovingly tends us, working uniquely in each person’s life.
As each new year begins, we often talk about taking inventory of our lives and making changes. We may feel discouraged because we cannot see much that has changed since last year or the year before. Second Corinthians 3:18 offers an image that I try to remember in such times: the Holy Spirit works in us to conform us to the likeness of Christ, “from one degree . . . to another.” Spiritual growth comes degree by degree (and sometimes, it seems, a tenth of a degree by a tenth of a degree). Every time we recognize that we need to grow, we prove that God is at work, tending the field that is us.
Several meditations in this issue offer wisdom about God’s continuing work in us. You may want to read again the meditations for January 6, 9, 21, 26, 28, 31 and February 6, 11, 13, 17, 19, 21, 22, 26 and 28 as preparation for the reflection questions below.
Questions for Reflection:
- Are you in a fallow time or a fruitful time right now in
your spiritual growth? What makes you say this?
- What biblical image for how God works within us is
especially meaningful for you, and why? How does this image confirm or contradict the image of us as a field?
- What is the hardest spiritual question anyone has ever asked you? How did you answer it then? How would you answer it if you were asked now?
- How do you plan for fallow time? What refreshes you
spiritually, and how often do you make time for this? Where do you need to cooperate more fully with God?
- How are you different today than you were 10 years ago? What changes do you see only in looking back? What does this say to you about your spiritual life?
From The Upper Room daily devotional guide, January/February 2010. Copyright © 2009 The Upper Room. All Rights Reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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