letting God be God

God alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.

Today we read from Thomas Keating's book A Daily Reader for Contemplative Living, and we read the selection for today's date. Feel free to purchase the book at bn.com and follow along.

One thing we learned from C.S. Lewis last year is that God is not a tame lion. God acts upon us... He delights in surprising us, in doing the last thing we would ever suspect. His thoughts are so far above ours that we literally can't even imagine what He is doing. We can't even comprehend all that He is doing, it is too vast for our limited minds to take in.

And yet we try, don't we? We think, sometimes, that we have a corner on God. That we have Him figured out. The temptation is there, when He answers our prayers, to almost feel like He's doing what we tell Him to. When really, all along, we are learning to cooperate with the work that He is already doing. Most of prayer, I believe, is learning to agree with God. He is, after all, right about everything. So the more we agree with Him, the less wrong we are.

The more we let God be God... and be the mysterious light that we can't control, tame, or even predict... the more we are truly interacting with God, rather than our misperception of Him.

God, please help us to open ourselves to who You truly are, rather than who we try to make You into.