Wednesday, April 15, 2009

YOUR heavenly father

the only good thing to come out of my brief stint as a Regent student:

Jenna R. M. Randall
SFRM 501
February 6th, 2009
Reflective writing # 1

Matthew Chapter 6


It’s amazing to me how you can read a passage of scripture a million times and, every single time, it will give you something new. I’ve read Matthew 6 more times than any other part of the bible. The chapter will live in my heart forever. It’s where the lilies grow. And the lilies are what brought me to God; for me, they will forever be a symbol of my conversion…but I digress.

Reading this chapter aloud, slowly, with no scalpel in hand, I was struck by how many times Jesus uses the phrase “Your heavenly father”…your, your—possessive pronoun. I stumbled over the word—simple, four letter thing—consonant outside and soft vowel center. The word kept echoing in my head. God Is. This much I finally know—but God is mine? I have not even been a Christian for a year yet. I keep feeling like there are steps I have to go through before I can claim that God is for me—as if the right to God is something I have to earn by punching some kind of religious time card—logging in all my hours, needing a certain amount before I can say out loud that I am a Christian.

Your, your… I was afraid to pronounce it, but I felt this pushing. The Lord was saying to me “Go ahead—it’s ok.” God is just as much in me as He is in any other person, whether they were born into their faith or whether they just declared it 5 minutes ago. The minute I gave my heart to God, a mutual possession took place. We became each other’s. I may not be able to say it with the same time-tested phrases that life-long Christians have at their disposal. I may still be in the process of rediscovering the year in a liturgical sense. I had no idea what ‘Advent’ was before 2008. I only learned the word ‘Shrove’ a few weeks ago. The hymns most of my church’s members can sing with their eyes closed have to be, for me, pulled out of every staff printed in our worn out hymn books.

I am a new kid on the block in man’s church. But in God’s church, I was always a member. God’s church has no walls. It has no rote. He doesn’t care if my communion is a wafer or some bread or if I’ve taken it one time or a million times. What matters now is that I can come to Him now and say “Yes I WILL partake of Your body for You ARE mine and I am yours and it took me all my life to realize it and all I can do is fall on my knees now for Your love is that great. Your mercy surrounds me. You save me.”

My Heavenly Father does see what’s in my heart. He does know what I have need of and He has always given it to me, whether I gave Him credit for it or not. He shows me patience. He does not require that I recite litany from memory. He requires my heart. He requires my soul and no amount of time could make those two things any more or less valuable to Him. I pray in a room by myself and keep it secret because no one else need hear me stutter to speak. I know my prayers are rough around the edges, like a piece of unsanded, unworked wood still growinig up out of the earth. My prayers have not yet been turned or stained or polished or carved by years of church life. But God takes them as they are. And He still answers them.

The Lord gives me what I need—just as the Scripture says—without me fretting. And He gives it to me simply because He made me—not because I can give Him a ritual song and dance that I’ve practiced for years. There are no hoops I need to jump through for me to be of God and for God and for Him to be of me and for me. So yes indeed He is my Heavenly Father too—He always was. Nothing has changed. The only difference now is I have sense to acknowledge Him and to claim Him out loud and to praise Him with every beat of my bursting heart that He has held in the palm of His hands since the minute He formed me and gave me breath that I should live. Hallelujah Lord, I have finally arrived.

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