In fact, I think I overheard myself arguing that very thing the other morning.
But then I reminded myself I have this:
Throughout my days I've listened to and repeated such phrases as "God supplies all my needs." Once, though, someone grabbed my attention by asserting that God had not given her what she needed.
The person making the claim wasn't angry, bitter, rebellious, or PMS-ing, so far as I could tell. She simply stated the truth. I her case, God had withheld marriage, something she'd come to see she needed. We were made to long to share our lives with another person.
God determined, this woman could see by the way her life played out, that her story would not be containing the provision of one of her significant needs. And so she grappled with her belief in a creator who withholds. Is this still a creator who is good? Who provides what is absolutely necessary in order for Life to happen as it should?
I've applied her words to various situations since then. Even though I received marriage in my own life, I see that in this wedded state I haven't had all my needs met. Sure, I don't get what I want. But, yeah, I don't even have some things I really need.
And yet some days, truly needy, I glimpse anew what I guess I'd call radical truth. My ultimately necessary thing. Of which it once was written, "It will not be taken from her." At least for me, when everything else falls to ashes, it's the shard I'd like to discover clutched in my grimy fist.
8 comments:
Discerning between wants and needs -- not always easy to do. Sometimes we can't see that indeed our needs are being met because we are so focused on what we want, which also can masquerade as what we think we need. And round and round we go...
Nice post, Deanna.
Thanks, Pam. I agree there's plenty room for emotions not telling it true between needs and mere wants. But there are times we know, I'd say, that there's really something that ought to be, and isn't.
I ought to have said, too, that in my dear husband's wedded state he does not have everything he needs, either. We're limited, unable to bridge gaps. But there's purpose in it, methinks.
If a man gets all he wants, he'll not have all his needs, as he's sure to need humility and to know the longing for the basics that's
suffered by so many. At least in my humble opinion.
I like how you put that, Mike. How could anyone represent what they thought was true to other people, if they couldn't relate to others' needs?
And I don't know that longing for the basics in life; I can only imagine and hope to help in some way.
Deanna, I posted a similar post about the needs/wants of marriage back in May. I called it Lean Not on Your Own Understanding (http://cherieswebwanderings.blogspot.com/2007/05/lean-not-on-your-own-understanding.html).
The last paragraph says:
"Sometimes what looks from a human standpoint to be a certain failure in the making is, in actuality, meant to reveal the higher ways of God, the often hard ways we humans don't normally stick around to witness."
So often we think we know what we need - even what we want - but the truth is, we don't know the planned result as God does, and we don't know his chosen route for our personal journey to righteousness. Yes, he gives us exactly what we need to get there. Otherwise, he'd be liar, for we wouldn't arrive at our destination. Or perhaps we have the wrong idea about just what that destination is.
Withholding can be, in and of itself, exactly what we need, as can that view that our needs aren't being met. It's a matter of Job-like belief that the God who has called you to himself knows what he's doing, even if we don't 'understand.' That may be the radical truth you clutch in your hand, or part of it?
Ultimately it's up to us to grapple with just how much 'understanding' we actually possess and how it compares to God's Understanding. Then, we learn to align with the Holy and forget about the petty.
Thanks for this chance for me to think this through again. It's an ever-adjusting thing, this belief in God.
Cherie! You're alive!
Thank you for the card. It's the cutest one I've seen in a while.
I reread your post from May. It is interesting how we return to these topics and continue plugging away at belief. Thanks for your further input.
Hmmm, I didn't experience single life through my thirties, so perhaps I'm not qualified to comment here (and I recognise that at it's core, this is not what your post is about), but I was single until into my late 20s and I learned to be content with that. If Frank had not come along, I had made my peace with being single. I could see the benefits of marriage and the benefits of singleness.
Sometimes I wonder if we don't turn God into too much of a personal gift giver. I am not suggesting God is not interested in our lives and does not care deeply for us, but we too often place ourselves at the centre of things, thus thinking we need to have all our needs met. I wonder if God's universal plan isn't so great that we need to be captured by the wonder of that instead, and then our needs fall into their place and we have true perspective. Just some of my present musings...
"I am not suggesting God is not interested in our lives and does not care deeply for us, but we too often place ourselves at the centre of things, thus thinking we need to have all our needs met." So well said, Cecily. Thanks for seeking a truthful perspective.
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