My blog now has a new address: atthecenter.aungst.org
The old address will redirect here, but you might want to update any links you might have.
Tag Archives: Change
The Center Has Shifted
Riding the Roller Coaster
All my life, I’ve tried to keep things smooth, calm, peaceful. I don’t like change, especially when it is outside of my influence or control. I suspect that’s one of the reasons I never rode roller coasters. Well, that and intense motion sickness.
My spiritual life lately has been paralleling my personal life, and both have been on a rather wild roller coaster. I feel like things around me are just tossing me back and forth. Just when I thought things were smoothing out, a radical turn in the track throws me in an entirely different direction. Just as things were slowing down a bit, the hill peaks and the ride drops down a hill I didn’t even see coming. Just when I think I can’t take the intensity any more, I roll out at the bottom and the ride takes a new turn.
Just like a roller coaster, though, there never seems to be a slow spot or a pause in the action. Every day is a new turn, a new hill, a new twist. Unlike a roller coaster, it doesn’t end in two minutes, letting me back out of the car at the station.
Conflicting Commands
Well, I figured out a way to cut off the last tendon of my hand and think I finally really threw it away. Not to say there won’t be the temptation to go rooting through the trash tomorrow or next week or next month, or sometime down the road to try and find the landfill it ends up in, but I have to lean on God to avoid giving in to that temptation. He’s the one who knows the next step and the one after that, and He’s the only one who can teach me how to live this new life He has planned for me.
There is however, another side to this—the fact that the hand that I had to cut off was another person, another child of God, not just a nameless sin. Yesterday, I quoted Matthew 18:8 in reference to cutting off the hand that causes me to sin. But there’s also scripture that says we need to reconcile with our Christian brothers, and I’m really wrestling with the meaning of it all.
Endings and New Beginnings
I picked up a card from the pile next to the guest book yesterday and was immediately struck by the image on the front: the sun hanging over the ocean, an intense orange glow reflecting on the waves and the clouds. But was it setting or rising? Considering that I was in line at a viewing, the obvious answer was that it was setting. But it was impossible to tell just from the picture, and it occurred to me that perhaps it was deliberately ambiguous.
