“Why is life such a crooked, praxis path God, even when we’ve sought your counsel and haven’t necessarily created our own crookedness?”
“Because a straight highway would mean so much less. There would be no space for you, no crooked corners for my called ones to stop and pause – to rest and stretch (and be stretched) in mind and spirit and body. There would be no kinks and fractures, creating useful dead ends where you can be hidden for a time and have your filth and weakness covered and where you can be forgiven and strengthened and healed – and learn to truly hear my voice. I’ve often hidden my children in deserts, caves, pits and foreign lands, for a season. A straight highway would be uninteresting and sterile. The journey would be over in minutes, like bad love-making. It would be like replacing all the foods of the world with a uniform grey pill. It would lack life and glory. It would be dreadfully dull and boring. I don’t need to make the journey from A to B, you do. I’m already at B and simultaneously inhabit A, and fully present at every point between. You need to make the journey. You are in great danger from the blinding heat of coming glory until you do, and you need just such a tortuous and beautiful path. On a straight highway of holiness you would all be road-kill.”
“But so much crookedness God? Such sharp bends that take us in the opposite direction at times. Such sharp bends, that are sometimes as pointed and cruel and bloodied as the sharpest knives? Friends of mine lost their young, firstborn son and a pastor I work with was mugged two weeks in a row!”
“Yes. I know the sharpness…of the nails that let the blood that heals the cosmos. That’s how great the need is. That’s how grand the story is. That’s how weighty the glory is. This is the difference between magic and providence, between a headache pill and healing.
P.S.
Experiencing and living with imperfect solutions and being spurred on by the failings to recognize and gain increasingly better versions until your idea or action or object radiates with glory and effectiveness is the cost of participation. I have made you not to be lazy spectators and passive consumers, but co-laborer’s and co-creators. That’s the cost and trust me it’s worth it.”
