Good morning…
After waking from my second sleep yesterday, I felt nudged to rework the final sentences of our post, People Inspire People.
“In our own language, we talk with God,” I felt compelled to share. “Please quiet my own self-centered opinions and fluently speak Your compassion, Your unity, Your understanding through me. As people inspire people, the Spirit of God will continue to calm fears, end oppression, and peacefully teach humanity how to genuinely love. Day after day the Lord added to their number everyone who was experiencing liberation (Acts 2:47b, VOICE).”
After editing our words, I opened an email from Ignatius House Retreat Center. God used a quote from Richard Rohr to continue our conversation.
Rohr also wrote about the Spirit inspiring people to inspire people: “According to the pattern, the wise fools are always formed in the testing ground of exile when the customary and familiar are taken away and they must go deeper and much higher for wisdom. As a result, they no longer fit or belong among their own. Yet paradoxically, they alone can point the way to the “promised land” or the “new Jerusalem.” Conventional wisdom is inadequate, even if widely held by good people. […]
The holy fool is the last stage of the wisdom journey. It is the individual who knows their dignity and therefore does not have to polish or protect it. It is the man or woman who has true authority and does not have to defend it or anyone else’s authority. It is the child of God who has met the One who watches over sparrows and fashions galaxies, and therefore can comfortably be a child of God. They and they alone can be trusted to proclaim the Reign of God.”
When we have intimately met the One who watches over sparrows and fashions galaxies, we go deeper and much higher for wisdom. Cutting free from conventional wisdom, we settle into our true identity, “I am a child of God.” Freely receiving and freely giving an endless supply of genuine love, with our daily lives we proclaim the Reign of God.
Then, in the very next moment, I happen upon the BibleGateway.com verse of the day. Brothers and sisters, God has called you to freedom! Hear the call, and do not spoil this gift by using your liberty to engage in what your flesh desires; instead, use it to serve each other as Jesus taught through love (Galatians 5:13, VOICE).
As trusting children we proclaim the Reign of God, and the Spirit continues to love through us, day after day after day.
Dear friends, hear the call, and do not spoil this gift.
…Sue…
