Chapter 68: The response to orders that seem impossible
If the superior after listening to this submission still insists on the original command, then the junior must accept that it is the right thing and with loving confidence in the help of God obey. (From Ch. 68 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. By Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
In facing an impossible situation, obedience seems very much like faith to me. I learn both in trusting the mantra to lead me to find God in my weak and vulnerable places.
“90% of life is showing up,” Woody Allen and others remind me. Some days just getting out of bed seems impossible let alone doing the most simple tasks of the day. Yet, I do the impossible, confront my perfectionism and move my bones. I take up my half of your yoke, Lord, and do my one percent and let you pick up the slack of the other 99%. Now in motion by your grace, today I even get to make some marvelous, glorious mistakes that will teach me that it is you who have all Power. There is nothing that you and I cannot do, together! I let you take my hand and we walk into the gift of this day together.
ReplyDeleteObedience is indeed a matter of the heart. To obey out of love and trust in God, is to overcome the limitations conceive by the mind.
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