reflections on going nowhere

Sometimes life feels like a series of stumbles as I grasp for reassurance that what I’ve decided to do is (or was) the right thing to do. And what I often decide is typically arranged in a linear fashion: I want to get from point A to point B.

Simple.

But life doesn’t work that way. It’s very disorienting, I must say. I think it must be very infrequent that one can say, “This is what I want and here is a sure-fire way to get it.” I think that often we change what we want in the midst of the “getting”—or we discover that the way we’ve chosen to get what we want is really not the way to get it. That path leads to something else. So, we stumble.

Sometimes I think life is the art of making peace with the fact that, though we may stumble, yet there is a grace which holds us in our stumbling. Can I live graciously in the midst of such ambiguity? That is the question. If so, how do I do that?

Lord, there is so much I simply

do.

not.

know.

Sometimes I feel like I’m just stumbling my way through life; meanwhile, the culture around me says I need to get my act together and figure out what I want to make of myself. Can you believe I’m in my late forties and I still haven’t decided what I want to do when I grow up? Well, believe it—‘cause that’s me, y’all.

I wonder if you can identify?  

And I can’t help but feel this is precisely what faith is for. Yes, it’s time for this doctor of theology to take his own medicine, methinks. Believe there is a goodness at work even in feeble fits and starts. May the eyes of our hearts see such goodness in a reality that meanders perhaps more than we would like.

……………………..

reflections on going nowhere

by troy cady

photo: “Info” by Steve Johnson on Unsplash