Pathways Press.com

Written by Winn Collier, a contemporary author.  This is an excerpt from his book “Let God.”

One of the beauties—as well as the prickly points—of Christian faith is that it is never intended to be lived in theory. Faith is fleshed out among particular people, in particular places. Some of the most important elements of our spiritual pilgrimage will be names—names of friends we’ve had and places we’ve lived. There will be people we couldn’t get enough of and people who hung around way too much. There will be places that felt like home, places that felt like hell, and places that had bits of both. To live well we must embrace this particularity. If we don’t we will miss the very best of what it means to be alive. We will miss living with an engaged, open heart. As Terry Tempest Williams said, “If I choose not to become attached to nouns—a person, place, or thing—then…my heart cannot be broken because I never risked giving it away.” This isn’t easy. The pain is in the particulars. We can believe in the idea of squashing our selfishness in order to love another. We can believe in the notion of giving ourselves to a place that isn’t exactly the place we would choose. However,m the actual doing of it, the loving and the giving—that often hurts. It hurts because we can’t control the process. We can’t choose all the people God will send into our life, and we can’t choose to turn it off when it gets too messy.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.  [Hebrews 10:24-25]