Your friend is faced with a decision so difficult, that while you want to help, you also feel a twinge of gratefulness in your own heart that it is hers and not yours to make.
She's endured to the breaking point. Even beyond. No formula works or even seems to apply except in theory. Sometimes, there just isn't a right answer. Sometimes there isn't a fix. No simple platitude can change the reality. And she has to choose.
She's always been the good girl. She's evaluated the options. She's studied the ideals. Taken the advice too much to heart. But there is no ideal here. And now is the question: Continue suffering as you have been, in faith that the point is the suffering? Or try to exchange the known for the unknown, also in faith?
Whatever is not of faith is sin. Is there a converse to that? When the only options are to stand still or to take a step, both require faith, and both can be terribly frightening, especially for the ones who have been trained that we must be good, choose good, do right always. What if she's wrong? Who or what waits to respond--karma? Or grace?
How big is this grace, then? If she says, "I don't know which way is right, but I'm going to take this step," does grace still cover? Is it that radical? There is no certainty. There is only very little confidence. The term doesn't even seem to fit, that's how uncertain this is.
Is it really true that nothing can separate us from his love? Nothing? Is a step into the utter unknown, when done in faith--because at this point there is absolutely nothing left but faith--covered, even if in some mysterious cosmic scheme, it was "wrong"? Or maybe even only slightly more wrong than the other wrong. Where does grace fit in when the only options are two evils?
She's endured to the breaking point. Even beyond. No formula works or even seems to apply except in theory. Sometimes, there just isn't a right answer. Sometimes there isn't a fix. No simple platitude can change the reality. And she has to choose.
She's always been the good girl. She's evaluated the options. She's studied the ideals. Taken the advice too much to heart. But there is no ideal here. And now is the question: Continue suffering as you have been, in faith that the point is the suffering? Or try to exchange the known for the unknown, also in faith?
Whatever is not of faith is sin. Is there a converse to that? When the only options are to stand still or to take a step, both require faith, and both can be terribly frightening, especially for the ones who have been trained that we must be good, choose good, do right always. What if she's wrong? Who or what waits to respond--karma? Or grace?
How big is this grace, then? If she says, "I don't know which way is right, but I'm going to take this step," does grace still cover? Is it that radical? There is no certainty. There is only very little confidence. The term doesn't even seem to fit, that's how uncertain this is.
Is it really true that nothing can separate us from his love? Nothing? Is a step into the utter unknown, when done in faith--because at this point there is absolutely nothing left but faith--covered, even if in some mysterious cosmic scheme, it was "wrong"? Or maybe even only slightly more wrong than the other wrong. Where does grace fit in when the only options are two evils?
No comments:
Post a Comment