Being Solved...

Those of us who live in the western world are often fixated on our incessant impulse towards resolution. At the movies we shake our head with clenched teeth if the story ends to illusive and without concise conclusion. We have to know whether or not "she" went back to the "other guy" or whatever other loose end is left for our imagination to rumble upon. We are infatuated with the Answer...

We forget that life often finds its next fresh breath in the asking of the question rather than the recounting of the answer. In our shortsightedness, we try to rush in to fix and SOLVE the problem, all the while unaware that the problem wasn't what needed to be fixed or solved - we were. Wisdom begins in the understanding that (most) problems are meant to solve us.

In times of crisis and testing, we are prone to look for a way out before we get crushed underneath the circumstances, when all the while the actual trial is looking for a way in - a way into the depths of our being through the cracks in our souls in order to make us complete and whole, lacking nothing (See James 1).

The heart of the Story of Scripture is birthed out of a reality that God is a loving, pursuing passionate God, who is intimately interested and present in our midst moving, drawing and compelling us closer to Himself. He is longing for us to see, as Richard Foster brilliantly penned, for us to see that God isn't merely a part of our story, by we are part of His life. (Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home).

As such, trails (circumstances, suffering, etc) are not merely another hurdle to remove, crisis to control or problem to solve, rather it is a journey to endure embedded with faith from God's past activity and hope in the fulfillment of His future promise(s).

Therefore, perhaps the most productive thing a SD can is crawl in the casket of that which is dying and wait in expectation for the creative healing and transformative power of Christ to emerge...

While there the prayers we pray, the essence we release and movement we propel is one that echos the words of Frank Lake, who writing of human suffering and the malady of the human condition being said there is nothing that we experience that cant be "battered into a meaningful shape" by the Hand of Grace & Love. We simply lie (or kneel) there in the casket. It is in this place that we become "crucified with Christ." It is also in this place that we will experience the "power of His resurrection."

Perhaps, the next time we find ourselves prone to fix, solve or simply remedy our present situation, we'd be better off by first pausing long enough to ask, "God is there something inside of me you are trying to 'solve'?".