Should I Be Delighted: The Journey

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.”  Psalm 81:10

Should I be delighted that God has chosen me for this journey? What journey you say? I don’t know, but I am on this journey with God.

This journey is about discerning God’s will for my life. This journey is about waiting and trusting God to meet my needs; to be obedient to that “special prompting.” This journey is about me not being in charge; to not be my stubborn self, but to trust the God I cannot see, the one who promised me, many years ago, to be with me always to the end of my time. It is this God, the one in our “Holy Bible,” who has set so many free.

So I am on this spiritual journey that requires me to be prayerful, open, alert and yes, faithful to the spirit’s prompting. A journey that requires me to be attuned to every facet of my life and “to pay attention on many levels: to consult scripture, to seek the advice of trusted advisors, to heed the sensus fidelium (the collective sense of the faithful), to read widely and deeply the best ancient and contemporary thinking, to pray, to attend to the prick of conscience and to the yearnings and dreamings of (my) heart, to watch, to wait, to listen.”*

God, I like taking trips, but the stubborn, take charge person that I am is not ready to go on this particular journey. But you, oh Lord, in your wisdom has chosen this journey for me. I worry about my health, the loss of friendship and oh yes, security. Waiting, being patient and trusting that my needs will be provided by someone other than me is really scary. But yet, I take this journey. A journey that my “angel heart” has prepared me for–because my provisions, my comfort, my salvation is in your hand for “you are my shepherd and I have everything I need” (Psalm 23:1).

I pray that as I travel on this journey that I am faithful and can speak these same words as assuredly as Paul when he said: “…for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:11-13).

Should I be delighted?

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 * Wendy M Wright, in Rueben Job’s book: A Guide to Spiritual Discernment, 1996, p.86.