Let Your Life Speak

Last week I read this little book. The first 55 pages were to me the most valuable and incredibly challenging to me. I loved how he debunked the myth that we can do whatever we want. Here's how Palmer says it, "Like many middle-class Americans, especially those who are white and male, I was raised in a subculture that insisted I could do anything I wanted to do, be anything I wanted to be, if I were willing go make the effort. The message was that both the universe and I were without limits, given enough energy and commitment on my part. God made things that way, and all I had to do was to get with the program." Later he adds, "I cannot be or do whatever I desire... Our created natures make us like organisms in an ecosystem: there are some roles and relationships in which we thrive and others in which we wither and die."

I struggle to be a dream-releaser in the lives of students who are trying their best to envision their futures and plan their education and a realist who knows that that kid who wants to play in the NBA is most likely going to be disappointed (because we really can't be whatever we want).

A second powerful notion is rooted in this quote, "When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless - a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless but faithless, based on the arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we are created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need."

Following this principle leads us away from serving out of necessity and toward serving out of our calling and giftedness. Granted there are some things, such as justice, that are universal needs and require a universal response. However, the way we respond to justice issues needs to be in line with the way we are called and created. It might even be dangerous and unhealthy for all of us to respond in the same way out of a sense of obligation.