freedom

Choosing God who is choosing you

God wants your time. He doesn’t want your time because he is greedy or selfish, but because he wants you. He wants to connect with you and have a relationship with you, and he can’t do that unless you give him your time. 

In truth, it was never your time anyway. You did not bring your life into being and you do not decide when it comes to an end. Every breath, every heartbeat, and every moment of your life is the graced gift from God. 

But God will never force himself on you. You have the will and right to choose other than God from moment to moment. He loves you so much, however, and knows that choosing other than him is not what is best for you, that he wants nothing more than for you to choose him because he is always choosing you. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Be right or be free

During the recent snowstorm we had, my wife unknowingly parked in a parking space that someone else had shoveled out for herself. By the time she parked there, almost every parking space in our complex had been cleared out, so it seemed harmless to take whatever space was available. But when she returned to her car, there was an angry note on her windshield. 

The note read something like, “I don’t appreciate you parking in the parking space that I shoveled out for myself. I had to get surgery and was counting on being able to park in that space when I got back. That’s why I put the orange cone there.” 

The problem is that, when my wife parked there, there was no orange cone. It was simply one of many empty parking spaces. She also had no way of knowing that the person who shoveled it out was having surgery. Nor was this an assigned or handicapped parking space. It was truly an innocent misunderstanding, but this misunderstanding created an unfortunate chain reaction.

Anger is a funny thing. It often seems as if it’s contagious. For example, my wife unknowingly parked in a parking space that another woman believed belonged to her. The woman got angry and left an inflammatory note on my wife’s car. When my wife read the note, she got angry. Feeling she was unjustly criticized, I then got angry on my wife’s behalf. But I soon began to see the absurdity of all of this anger over a parking space. 

As I sat with this thought for a while, it occurred to me that resentment is really a distraction. In fact, it’s a deadly distraction in that it separates us from God. It prevents us from looking to him for guidance and listening for his quiet voice. Resentment convinces us that our feelings are more important what Jesus’s says is the greatest commandments of all, which is to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40 NIV). To willfully hold onto a resentment is to defy God himself. 

And so we have a decision to make. We can either be angry or we can be obedient. We can hold onto resentments or we can make room in our hearts to hear God’s voice. We can be right, at least in our own minds, or we can forgive and be free. As it says in the book of Matthew 6:14-15, if we forgive others, God will forgive us, but if we choose not to forgive, we will also not be forgiven. A heart filled with anger has no room for love and, since we are told that God is love, that means that a heart filled with anger has no room for God (1 John 4:8). 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Thinking about swimming

I’ve been thinking a lot about swimming lately. My sister-in-law’s pool just opened for the season and both my daughter and I love to swim. In fact, I don’t remember a time when I was didn’t love being in or around the water. And like me, my daughter has been attracted to the water since she could walk. 

The first time we took her to the ocean, when she was still in diapers, my daughter tried to run straight into the water with no fear or hesitation. We would pull her back and, as soon as we let her go, she would try to run back in. It was like a scene straight out of Moana (an amazing movie, by the way). 

Now that the pool is open, she wants to go swimming every chance she gets. The only problem is that the water is really, really cold. That doesn’t stop her though. She eases her way in and will swim until we make her get out. It has, however, stopped me from joining her. 

The reason I’ve been thinking a lot about swimming lately is because I’ve been finding myself avoiding going in with her because the water is too cold. She all but begs me to join her, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I have a mental block that keeps me from taking the plunge, as it were. But this was not always the case. 

I used to have no fear nor hesitation about swimming whatsoever. Regardless of the temperature, if I was allowed in, I was jumping in. I swam in lakes, rivers, pools, and the ocean, and I didn’t care how cold it was. I was just happy to be in the water. 

So what changed? That’s what I’ve been pondering. What is it about getting older that makes us more hesitant, more reluctant, that keeps us from jumping in head or feet first, and that prevents us from simply enjoying ourselves? Why am I resistant to the cold water when I used to just be grateful to be able to swim? This may all seem silly, but there is something that happens to us as we get older that I’m just not okay with. 

In spite of my daughter’s pleading and her subsequent disappointment, I didn’t go swimming with her and, quite frankly, I’m bothered by that. I don’t want to be the kind of parent who says, “No,” to my child when she wants me to join her in the pool simply because I may be uncomfortable. I don’t want to be the kind of parent who avoids treats spending time with my child as an inconvenience. 

Beyond that, I don’t want to be the kind of person who never truly lives. Yeah, I know, it’s just a pool, but for whatever reason, it feels like more than that to me. My reluctance to jump in feels like a sign that I’ve taken this growing up thing too far, that I’ve mistaken being uptight, avoiding discomfort, and being unable to enjoy the moment as a sign of maturity. Growing up is for old people and I’d rather live.