Invitation #4 - Less Reacting/More 'Holding'

Life isn't neat and clean. It is often very messy and dirty. In a fallen world there is much to react against. This morning I (Jim) was talking with a mother who is at the end of herself trying to care for a special needs 13 year old son with very little support from her husband or friends. "I'm just done. I'm mad with God, myself, my family and just about everything else." What can she do? Sometimes the best we can do is just to hold what we are living because there is little we can do to fix things. We ask God to help us live with what life is rather than with what it ought to be. Holding is hard. We often are holding a mess. Within the container of our life we find internal and external craziness. We try to make it better but it doesn't seem to change. All we can do is hold it.Holding is an exercise in remembering--remembering the Word that reminds us our suffering is one of the ways we fellowship with Christ. If we are in too big a hurry to fix we usually wind up reacting. Then we can't remember what we have read. We forget that God is always with us.When we hold the word of God within us we let it have the place and space it requires to do the work of illuminating our soul. God’s word makes evident our thoughts, our affections, our desires, our motives, our behavior. But for this to occur we need to hold what we have heard. It is for this reason we recommend the discipline of contemplative reading of God’s word for the transformation of our soul. When we read in this way we are holding God’s word. We are not so determined to take action as we are to listen at deeper levels within our soul.Holding what God has said helps us to hold what others say and do. I am convinced that when listening to others, if we are in a hurry to do something about what we heard. More often we need to what they have shared soak into our souls. That is what I tried to do this morning. I couldn't change the mother's situation. I don't have the resources to help her son. But I could simply hold the sacredness of her sorrow.Maybe today we need to recommit to holding (just being with what ‘is’), so as to avoid reacting. What do you feel is God's invitation to you?