Overwhelmed.

When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God’s gift of grace.
Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination. It stirs our emotions, churning in self-destructive ways, closes us in upon the mighty citadel of self, leads to depression and despair, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God. The language of unhealthy guilt is harsh. It is demanding, abusing, criticizing, rejecting, accusing, blaming, condemning, reproaching, and scolding. It is one of impatience and chastisement. Christians are shocked and horrified because they have failed. Unhealthy guilt becomes larger than life. The image of the childhood story of Chicken Little comes to mind. Guilt becomes the experience in which people feel the sky is falling.

The prophetic word spoken by Jesus to a thirty-four-year-old widow, Marjory Kempe, in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1667 remains ever new: “More pleasing to Me than all your prayers, works, and penances is that you would believe I love you.”
The grace to let go and let God be God flows from trust in His boundless love. “Since he did not spare his own Son, bu gave him up for all of us, then can we not expect that with him he will freely give us all his gifts?” (Romans 8:32). Yet many of us find it exceedingly difficult to trust. Perhaps haunted by the specter of parents who lived in poverty, indoctrinated by slogans like “In God we trust; everybody else pays cash” and songs such as “Jesus Saves His Money at the Chase Manhattan Bank,” [I don’t know where he gets these things] we grew up with a skeptical spirit and assumed managerial control of our destiny.
Only love empowers the leap in trust, the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the readiness to move into the darkness guided only by a pillar of fire. Trust clings to the belied that whatever happens in our lives is designed to teach us holiness. The love of Christ inspires trust to thank God for the nagging headache, the arthritis that is so painful, the spiritual darkness that envelops us; to say with Job, “If we take happiness from God’s hand, must we not take sorrow too?” (Job 2:10); to pray, with Charles Foucauld:
Abba, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you. I am ready for all: I accept all. Let your will be done in me and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my spirit. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and I give myself, surrender myself into your hands without reserve, with boundless confidence, for you are my father.

And lastly…a piece of Heaven KJM reminded me of today. Love.

Press play. Close your eyes. And let God enjoy your presence the way He desires. And for your own sake…try to do the same in Him. He can fill all the gaps.

Rest my friend.

Night.