“God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.”
— Richard Rohr, The Naked Now, p. 23
So often when we are in a process of discernment about a choice we’re trying to make in our lives, we are focused on the concluding outcome of that decision. What is the right decision here? What am I supposed to do? Did I make the right choice? Have I landed in the place I was supposed to land?
But the quote from Richard Rohr above reminds us that life with God is more about living through a life with God than arriving at a particular point or conclusion or decision. Life with God is a verb and a process, he says. It is active and ongoing. It involves continuous change, and that change concerns our inward and outward being.
- Who is God making me to be?
- What is the fullness and wholeness that is his aim over the whole course of my life?
- How does this decision versus that one affirm that work of wholeness in me?
These are the real questions at the heart of discernment.
It is not about one right answer or another that will bring us to a place of arrival. It is about how a decision continues to shape us into the person God intends for us to become in the broader, longevity-seeking scope of our lives.
What is the work of healing, wholeness, and redemption God seems to be about in your life? And how might the decisions you are seeking to make be a part of that broader work?
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Isn’t it funny how we’re so willing to treat God as a means to an end when we would never consider such a thing with our significant other? Time with a special someone is just that, time. There is generally no concern for anything other than more of that…time. Any questions are instantly answered by Presence not Pretense, by Process not Points on a map. Job’s questions were answered once God showed up. The rest was gravy.
I think this is similar to what it means to be faithful. Being faithful in my response to God and my response to the situations of our lives does not necessarily mean that I am right/correct. It simply means that my intention and hope are to respond in grace, love and light. I’ll make mistakes, for sure, just as in discernment, I will not always choose the “correct” answer. But what is important is knowing that whatever I decide, whether it is “right” or “wrong” is not the most important thing. What is most important to remember is that God is with me, and with you, and with all, regardless of my decisions and actions. As God forms me, I will, with grace, increasingly discern and act out of love. As Paul writes in Romans, “owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another…love does no evil to the neighbor; hence love is the fulfillment of the law” (13:8-10). And as William Penn wrote, “let us try then what love will do.”
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