The Raw Material of My Life

"Time is perpetual presence, perpetual novelty. Every moment is a new arrival, a new bestowal. Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy. The moment is the marvel; it is in evading the marvel of the moment that boredom begins which ends in despair."

--Abraham Joshua Heschel
 
I want this statement to be true, because it implies that there is far more to life than I usually perceive. I believe that I have experienced this truth, because I do not feel boredom or despair when I get a glimpse of the marvelous moment. But when I am callous and unable to see the holy gift, I find myself asking the same old questions: Why don't I have eyes to see, or ears to hear? How do I wake up to the abundant gift of life right now? How do I stay in the present when painful memories or fearful projections haunt my imagination?

Since "every moment is a new arrival, a new bestowal" there is a question implicit in each moment, something like: Did you see that? Do you hear the invitation in this experience? Maybe the answer to waking up is as simple as hearing the questions as they are being asked. I've heard it said more than once that the most important thing in life is to ask the right questions, because the wrong ones lead to a dead end. I believe that we are always asking questions. But maybe we keep asking the same dead end questions and they hinder us from hearing the questions that Life is asking. 

Some of the dead end questions might be: How will I ever pay off this debt? What should I do? Will I be anonymous forever? Why do we let them continue to do that? When will this (whatever it is) end, change, get better? Who's in charge? Why is life so hard? 

Rabi Heschel suggests that we might be prone to evade the marvel of the moment. It might be that these habitual questions are an unconscious, automatic way to avoid the inherent challenges of "novelty." The blessing of the abundant now is a gift, but it also asks something from us. And from what I've seen and experienced, most of us feel overwhelmed by what we already have on our plate. The new thing better be pretty marvelous and it better be manageable, or I might not have time for it. And, of course, it rarely is. God will not be managed.
 
I've become increasingly aware of the dead end questions that blind me to the marvel of the moment. In the process, I have begun to form a question that feels like a good question because it keeps my attention focused on the activity of God's kingdom in this world. The question is, "What will God create from the raw material of my life?" As I take in my life with all it's trouble and uncertainty, surprises and delights, it enters the eternity that God put in my heart. (Eccl. 3:11) It becomes material in God's kingdom within. God is ever creative. Something is happening inside of me and it is good, maybe even "very good." (Genesis 1:31)

Another happy consequence of asking the question, "What will God create from the raw material of my life?" is that I feel both powerful and peaceful. I don't need to fear anything. I can breath it all in, into the kingdom within and wait to see what God's spirit will do with it. I used to deal with anxiety by breathing in love and breathing out fear. Now I breath in fear and breath out love. Isn't that what Jesus modeled? God's victorious kingdom exists in me, not in the world. This is the place, inside of you and me, where God is operating. And our lives are the material from which he will accomplish his "kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven."