THE POSITIVE LIFE OF BEING OVERWHELMED

The Kingdom of God is deep.  You know that don't you?  Its very design is for its adherents to swim in the risky recesses of the Divine's pool where wow and awe excel. We want to try to ward off our temptation to piddle about in the shallow end of the church pool where there would less likely be threat or struggle.  Work and wonder, potential and power await within those of threatening locations; the very places where we feel that we might likely go under.

It seems odd and backward to deem God's call toward us to launch out into the deep, does it not?   I mean, does He really want us to go into zones of Kingdom Life where we could actually go under simply trying to carry out His imagination for us?  Wouldn't fishing for men from bank's edge be wiser than to just be personally thrust into an unknown, unmanageable, unchartable course?

The Word repeatedly references us walking in the mystery of God.  Mystery? Unexplainable.  Undefinable.  Basically un-many-zones.  Yet, the point of entering into mystery is the allowance that God will be there; He will provide.  I like how Calvin Miller points us into courage by remarking, We do not go deep to study God, we go deep to taste his reality.  In such experience we cannot define God, for he is not definable.  But we do, ultimately, define ourselves.  In the depths we meet our smallness, our powerlessness, our need.

Oh that last sentence pegs me.  I would have assumed that by this ripe age I would be much farther along than what is.  Really, the temptation can be to shrivel up in a corner and admit I'm always going to be this way.  Oh, how I wish it weren't true.  But, it is.  So I (and we as well) offer Him my (our) smallness in hopes that His mystery will kick in to make a meaningful difference.  

Being overwhelmed has all the marks of being a positive blessing.  May we work together on believing this is true.  It seems consistent that the less we are there is more room for the I AM.