Thinking Skills

Opening Prayer

Here I am Lord,
Listening
Speak to me
within my heart and soul.I am listening.

Isaiah 55:55

‘I don’t think the way you think’

Reflection
How do I think?

I think if I was God then I know what I would do – and it wouldn’t be what God does.

I would be like one of those beauty pageant queens who wishes for world peace, an end to starvation and suffering, a reversal in global warming.

I think I would make it so that everyone would love each other, greed would vanish, there would be no illness, sadness or suffering. Even natural disasters would not happen – the earth would be quiet and content.

I think that I would make sure that there was real justice – that only bad things happened to bad people. And if I am being really magnanimous – that there would be no bad people. Everyone would have enough, everyone would have what they needed.

At first it sounds idyllic, but on second thoughts where does this thinking take us as people? This may be a vision of the ideal – but is it your ideal? Perhaps, you think a different way?

On second thoughts it seems like one of those science fiction stories, the Stepford Wives, the Matrix, where the need to challenge, to survive, to find our potential is no longer needed or wanted.

We may all love each other in this perfect world– but where would be the love borne of adversity, the love of a parent for a disabled child; the love of a husband for his infirm wife; the love of a stranger for a starving child?

Where would be the strength and determination to make a ‘better world’; where would be the curiosity and creativity borne out of the desire to do more and be more. Where would be the wonder of creation in a quiet sea or still blue sky. Where would be the diversity borne of necessity?

My answers to the great questions are so naïve that they are simply childlike.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the communities who so often live in love and harmony find their homes amongst the most challenging of the earth’s landscapes. Our minds, hearts and souls cannot be still until they are still in God.

Because this is not Heaven, this is the world that we chose to live in, and to live in it to the best of our ability is all we can do – and leave the thinking to God.

Contemplation
Out-thinking God?

Admit it – that it’s a thing you do, we all do.
Why does God do, allow, not stop this or that?

‘ If I was God ……’

But it is not even that we don’t see the big picture – we don’t really see the picture at all. At best we see the bit around us and that’s from our point of view. like those ground squirrels who pop their heads up out of their own burrow imagining that the whole world is like the view before them. Trying to step outside that box is so hard. Putting on other people’s shoes and walking in them, harder.

Empathy – probably one of the hardest emotions to have – especially in today’s world.

And even then –

We don’t, won’t, can’t know the extent of all the what’s and why’s no matter how good we think we are at multi-tasking.

That’s why God is God.

People who don’t believe often use the’ well, if He exists then why doesn’t he…?’ Just like Thomas in the Gospel this week.

Sometimes the picture is just too big, the answer too beyond us and maybe God knows that all He can do is say

‘I don’t think like you think..’


Closing Prayer
May the blessing of the Sacred Three
The Father who gave us the Word
The Son who is the Word
The Spirit who opens the Word within us
Be with us today and evermore.Amen

wordinthehand2009

Comments

Bea said…
Hi! It's been awhile since I came by to visit. I appreciate your devotional style of writing...I've been thinking lately in a manner similar to where you are going with this. I think the little prayer you started out with says it best: "Here I am Lord, listening." That's where I am at the moment, just listening. Neo, in The Matrix, woke up to his reality. Like we do when we wake up in a dream, only in reverse. He was dreaming, and had to wake up to reality. I think people are a lot like that. They go through the first half of their lives 'asleep' and wake up in the second half with a new sense of awareness. It's often painful, but when we become aware of our purpose, as Neo does, as Jesus did, we can change the world. Eradicate the evil. We can be part of saving it.
Good entry! bea
10 July 2009 at 21:03
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