Enjoying the Solidity of Focused Direction

“A life lived in the light of God’s love and surrendered to him in faithful service is pretty hard to knock off course.”

— Monica O’Neil

When I first read this quote I was struck by the stability and strength in its truth. Wow, God really has given us the key to life. The solidity of focused direction is grounded in such simple wisdom...

But of course this truth will be tested. Or, better put, we will be tested by the very way we apply this material that provides such solidity for focused direction. We will be found wanting by the manner of our being. We will be challenged to grow through vulnerable standpoints of weakness and to steel, otherwise, those parts of us that only show up as flimsy in the milieu of the present challenge in its vagaries of surprise.

There are many twists in the average day.

Yet again, we face this truth: living in the light of God’s love, surrendered to him alone in faithful service, totally committed to those ends, we have the key to life. If nothing else is as important as that mission we will have the solidity of focused direction; a spiritual rigidity that is malleable enough to remain on course.

Let us dig deeper into the simplicity of this wisdom:

The author of the quote impels us to know what really matters to us: best if it is Jesus Christ.

Life is queer that it requires us to live many boring and busy days, yet we are swept uncontrollably down a torrent on the odd day when we least expect it. At 4 PM on an idle Tuesday we are numbed by news so starkly apparent we are backwashed and busted. There are so many experiences of life that find us wanting; so many times when we are pushed off bearing.

Now these times are all tests of our character, and the depth of our character is known by the responses we have during such times. But character is not a fixed entity; we shift with the shape of our spiritual tide. Inwardly towards the shore to nestle for a time with God or outwardly into the seas that rough us up and may even spit us out.

We are known by what defines us. By what is observable in the poignant time; that is how we are made, both by the material of our making and by the making upon another person’s mind of whom we are.

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There is simplicity and strength in the solidity of focused direction. To be centralised upon Christ is to be grounded upon a firm foundation that is not easily shook. We are both what we are and what we do and what we do informs who we are. If the best thing we do is surrender to God, then the best and worst of a topsy-turvy life is enjoyed for what it is, nothing more and nothing less, but in the unfazed knowledge that God is good all the time.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.