On a Journey

A friend of mine has given me a subscription to On a Journey meditations. When he mentioned it to me, the name itself intrigued me, since I struggle with a number of issues, questions and annoyances (both large and small) that have an effect on my own journey back to God. I do believe we each are on a journey back to the source of all that was... and of which we are, especially if we have fallen asleep to that fact.

Today's meditation ended with this thought: Control isn't a pathway to faith. Control is an addiction that will kill us. Ha! I certainly needed to hear that! I constantly delude myself into thinking I am not one of those "control freaks" who has to run everyone else's business. But on a scale from one to ten, we all fall somewhere... nobody's a zero, except maybe God.

Our Old Testament has plenty of examples of how God attempted to control his human creation without much success. Only in Jesus, did that need for control surrender to the power of love. There is a price to be paid for surrender, and often it looks like failure. But God does not see, think or count things the same way we do, much as we would like Him/Her to.

God is a mystery to us, we say, with varying degrees of hostility and awe. We cannot control God so we attempt to control each other. Do it my way or I will make you pay somehow. I will punish you, harass you, call you names, slander you, bomb your country, kill you dead. But even when I kill you, I have not gained control. Life is still a mystery and my place is still here on this wheel of time and experience.

Those who make a project out of trying to control another's beliefs, words, thoughts, are addicted to their own delusions of excellence. They would rather direct someone else's journey than face their own. AWOT (as another friend likes to say) a waste of time.