The Wildness of God

We live our lives before the wild, dangerous, unfettered and free character of the living God.
(Walter Brueggemann)

The unknown Romancing or the Message of the Arrows- which captures the essence of life? Should we keep our hearts open to the Romance or concentrate on protecting ourselves from the Arrows? Should we live with hopeful abandon, trusting in a larger story whose ending is good, or should we live in our small stories and glean what we can from the Romance while trying to avoid the Arrows?
Perhaps God, as the Author of the Story we're all living in, would tilt the scale in a favorable direction if we knew we could trust him. And therein lies our dilemma. There seems to be no direct correlation between the way we live our lives and the resulting fate God has in store for us, at least on this earth. Abraham's grandson, Jacob, lives the life of a manipulator and is blessed. Jesus lives for the sake of others and is crucified. And we never quite know when we're going to run into the uncertainty of the part God has written for us in his play, whether our character has significant lines yet to speak or will even survive the afternoon.
(The Sacred Romance , 47 by John Eldredge)

Its gotten hot here in Tucson. Its gotten hot all over the northern hemisphere. But it does this every year. Has for the past while. Its part of the glorious creation our Father has made for us to experience. Its a wild creation, patterned after our wild Father and made to fit us to a "T". We often don't understand why things have to be so wild, sometimes difficult, like the heat or stress, family problems, people issues, physical ailments or difficult decisions, ours or the ramifications of others. We know we don't live in a vacuum, our actions impact others and others actions impact us. Sometimes for good, sometimes not. Again, its a part of the wildness we live in. As a modern society we want to clean and sanitize all around us. We want it calm and comfortable, we want it to make us happy. We want to be in control... But the wildness won't allow it. If we try and force our control on our world, we end up miserable.

So what do we do? Give up? Give up demanding we be in control? Just let the wildness happen? Just let our wild Fathers will prevail? Who knows where we might end up if we did that. Do I mean, just trust God? Is that all I'm trying to say. Sit back, relax and let God be God. Let the wildness happen and see where it takes you / us.

Looks like its taking Judy and I to Chad, Africa next spring. That will be wild!