Reacting to this world

I don't usually do more than one post at a time but I think I might start because sometimes I have thoughts that follow thoughts. Yeah - I probably should just go with it, especially when I know I have the time, like now.

I know that there are some people who struggle more in this life than others. I've talked some about choosing and my thoughts about choosing continue because I know that for some to choose it's harder than for others. And there are some who think they are choosing but really they are just responding to the driving forces within themselves. To choose is an action, not a reaction.

Anyway - I want to share this idea from Elijah House Ministries. When I heard it as part of one of their teaching sets I thought it was a completely radical idea but I had no problem accepting it. I know they are not the only ones to whom God has revealed the beginning of each person's life this way. See Gene Edwards also for one.

They speak of the spirits (us) who are with God in the place where he dwells before being born of woman into earth. Gene Edwards in his book The Divine Romance speaks of the spirits in the Hall of Destiny waiting to see what will be theirs. A friend I had in the late "80s was telling me the story of her and she said that after becoming a Christian she asked God about the life that she had lived and he said to her (don't remember the exact words) that she had agreed with him about her life before being born. My son is another one. Probably 10 years ago he said he felt compelled to live his life. (I had a hard time with that. I think I'm finally catching up.)

So then the Sanford's (Elijah House founders) describe what the journey from heaven to earth must be like......

Imagine being in the pristine atmosphere of Heaven, in the presence of this splendid Creator/Sustainor/All Powerful/Beyond our earthly comprehension Good God. We are spirit living in the environment that we were created for having sprung from God's very essence and being. For reasons that we only barely comprehend now (if at all) but no doubt understood then, God has created EARTH and TIME and this completely different atmosphere. He has asked us spirits to come here and dwell within bodies made of dirt; to live here in a polluted atmosphere and to live..... A LIFE. It is a life we agreed to before we came. But O the journey of getting here. Nine months in the womb of flesh, absorbing WHAT? The stuff of your parents lives including the generations from which they came. Some are born into homes that are prepared and waiting, some not. Some are born to people who seem to have a grasp on how to grow into being a parent, some not. Some are born into homes not fit for anything. Even in the best case though, if you think about it, the difference between heaven's atmosphere and earth's atmosphere has to be indescribable. No matter how good our intentions as we agree to come here to live it would seem that some of us absolutely reject it once we get here. We never reconcile to being here. We can't seem to breath this air without choking. We look around us and wonder why we have to be here. The reactions run the gamut, I'm sure, from those that embrace life and are OK to those who simply cannot and leave on their own terms.

I wonder sometimes what life would have been like for me had I not come to know my God through the Savior. The seeds of depression were there from the beginning of me and began to manifest before I became a believer. My long journey to sanity and wholeness has been about becoming as reconciled to God as he is to me. Whatever the spiritual realities are that required the coming of a Sacrifice/Savior, the accomplishing of that act completely and utterly reconciled God to me and in his own heart, me to him. The reconciliation of me to him is my journey and my choice. It is the work of my lifetime. This is the work he has for us all - that we believe.

Being reconciled to God is not a mental exercise but we often treat it as one, giving lip service to it just as we do so many "Christian" ideals. It is a reality of a spiritual kingdom. As I become more reconciled to him I find it easier to accept the unacceptable because I am increasing able to accept that His plan for Earth/Time is larger than anything I could have ever conceived. I am part of his expression on the earth. Is the gang banger? the murderer? the terrorist? the hindu? muslim? buddhist? MY answers to those questions are not as pat as they once were. There is, I believe, more here than is meeting our eyes.

When Larry and I left the organized church the walls of religious thinking began to crumble. They had to just for us to be able to walk out the door. But over the years we have said many times - You can walk out of the structure in a day but it will take years for it to be gotten out of you. Well, after all these years I think more of that structure is crumbling within me.

As we were leaving a church situation once (on our journey out) there was a situation that I was asking God about and I asked something like this... God, the church has been doing this "thing" this way for hundreds of years. Can the church have been wrong for all this time? His answer was a quiet yes.

Any carpenter knows that if you get off by 1/8 inch in the beginning of a project by the time you are done you will be off by much more than than that if you do correct it somewhere. Just because we -Christianity- does things or believes things a certain way and has for many years that doesn't mean it didn't get off somewhere hundreds of years ago. Our relationship must be with the living Word within us and we must trust that the work he began he can finish. It just might not look like what we thought it would when HE is finished with HIS work.

Well, I've done some writing today but I sure feel better. Very cathartic. If you've read this far - both posts - I'm quite impressed.