In a collective experience, inescapable by almost every youth on the planet; in the past 6 months I have grown 6 years… maybe 10. Status didn’t matter, for when the world stops turning, it does tend to interrupt your schedule or lack thereof.
As James Lane Allen apparently liked to say, “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it”. Well, revealed I was. And there was much I saw which was not to like. Realising you have been asleep takes many forms; the cutting out of bad habits, the cleansing of the media you consume. But above all, the now visible shamefully obvious negligence of the spiritual well-being. This, amongst many other bad habits were increasingly revealed to me.
Alas, where the opportunities to practise bad habits were not forcibly and disturbingly ripped out of the individual’s grasp; I observed a slow, quiet and revolutionary action practised by myself and others around me. Prioritisation.
I have a particularly bad habit. Quite frankly, this habit is antilogical and yet I find a way to practise it regardless. It’s called not trusting God with my life. Often, this habit manifests itself in attitudes surrounding conflicting moral and cultural issues within which I find myself tied up in knots. Issues wherein the lines are far from black and white. When things become so hopelessly confusing and contradictory I start to ask; where is God in all of this?
Let’s step back for a minute. Do we really think we know better than God? Surprisingly, quite frequently we do.
A number of weeks ago I walked on the beach with a friend. He turned to me whilst we walked and commented on the inconvenience of the existence of bodies of water containing salt water rather than fresh water. His rhetoric then inevitably steered toward the idea that God could have done a better job in this ‘creation’ matter. If this ‘God’ really existed, then he tended to make a lot of mistakes.
I would say that my friend’s mistake was his only being able to see what the salt water could or couldn’t give to him, rather than seeing the endless sustenance that it brought to the sealife and ecosystems in the salt water.
This distortion of perspective is the chief reason why we confuse and tire ourselves with issues of cultural and moral significance. We can only see what seems unfair to us. Seeing through the endless filters of external influences and assumed attitudes of our time. In turn, we equate our corrupted value systems with God’s.
Only when we stop and ask God to show us what is right and for the wisdom to fulfil his will, will we correct our perspective and really learn how to truly prioritise.
