I love people, of all sizes and shapes, in all kinds of states. So, in counseling sessions I would rarely say something this blunt.
(Ok, now and then I have.)
But I am not sitting across from anyone. I don’t have anyone in particular in mind (much). And blogs are a good place to say some things that cannot be easily said in one-on-one encounters.
If the next day or two lodges sideways in someone’s life out there, well “Let the one with ears hear.” This could be a good thing, if you let your temperature and your blood pressure drop a few notches before you email Al Gore to complain about what’s happening on his internet.
One of those topics — and it is probably among the top ten human struggles — revolves around the subject of NEED. So it will take a few days to unpack.
First: we all have needs. We were born with needs. We were made incomplete. And, frankly, I think that God made us that way intentionally.
God is not nearly as interested in our being supremely successful islands of achievement, as God is interested in us being in loving relationship — with God and with one another. In fact, he has made the whole island thing pretty much impossible. (On that, more tomorrow.)
That is why all of life’s most profound spiritual challenges revolve around broken relationships and the need to restore them. God is not interested in wacking you for the sake of wacking you. God does not morph into the angry-I-could-care-less-about-you-God because you have broken a rule. In fact, God does not morph into another kind of God at all. We screw up. God wants to love us and if the stuff we do becomes a problem, it is always about the obstacles it creates for love and relationship.
So needs are what you have and in-need is what you are.
You can’t fill out an application for a need-free life. You can’t live effectively into what God wants for you without facing your needs. And you will not get off this rock without continuing to have needs. In fact, if you are “lucky” you will find yourself faced with a set of needs that looks a lot more like its needy beginning than the middle of it during which you pretended you didn’t have needs.
Why?
Because there is a God, and you are not God.
Because God is love and God can’t help but look for opportunities to love.
And because you are that opportunity.
That’s not bad news. That’s Good News.
And you are blessed.
“Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased.
Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken.
Rather, it is inscribed on a heart, and there it shall remain forever.”
I have no idea who wrote this; I did not but it seems applicably to today’s blog.