“Every
one of us knows intuitively that both predestination and fee will must be true
because they are the foundation of every good story. If a story has no plot, no
destiny—if its events are haphazard and arbitrary—it is not a great story.
Every
good story has a sense of destiny, of fittingness as if it were written by God.
But every story also leaves its characters free. .
. . .The more nearly the characters have a life of their own and seem to leap
off the page into real life, the greater a writer we have. God, of course, is
the greatest writer of all. Since human life is his story, it must have both
destiny and freedom”
Was
Frodo predestined to take the ring or did he choose to take it?
Was he totally free or totally destined?
When
I chose to follow Christ sitting alone in the back row of a lecture hall one day
in the Fall of 1979, was it an act of my free will or was I simply succumbing to
the destiny chosen for me by God? Am
I free agent in the universe or am I puppet on a string?
I
have learned that both are true, fully true, and I have learned this not just
from scripture. The two are
not a 50/50 proposition. They are
two facets of the same jewel. When
I gave myself to Christ I can look back and know that although I made my decision fully and freely it was also
at the same time as if I were carried
to it. Indeed I was carried. On the
one hand my decision was a decision that required the exercise of my will.
On the other hand nothing could be more beyond doubt in my mind that my
decision was not my decision.
Where
then does this leave you and me?
“all
the days of my life were written in Your book before any one of them came to
be” Psalm
139:16
“Choose this day whom you will serve” Joshua 24:15
“Choose this day whom you will serve” Joshua 24:15
It
leaves me incredibly grateful for Grace that transcends, no – it infuses,
transforms and fulfills my will. And
I am incredibly grateful for freedom, for it is freedom which allows participation
with God, relationship with God,
for without this freedom I am little more than a marionette acting at the pull
of a string. After all, like
God, Geppetto wanted more than a wooden puppet, he wanted a son.
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You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
ReplyDeleteYou may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/gotta-serve-somebody#ixzz2kXAsjBqp