I have trouble with a story often told about early Celtic Christian Monks. Apparently, they were inclined to jump into little boats without an oar or rudder and trust God to take them to some place God wanted them to be.
While these guys were clearly optimistic, they were not stupid. They knew about currents and windstorms. They surely understood that many of the tiny rock islands they were about to encounter were nearly uninhabitable but their faith in God’s presence with them gave them courage. I think the monks were trying to leave their egos on the shore alongside all other tools useful to marine navigation. They trusted God’s guidance to appear in the flow of the water itself and they wanted to remove any barriers to God that were born in fear or self-promotion.
I personally think all of them were nuts but I have a different idea of how God is at work in this world. I think God is comfortable with human free will. I think God baked the ability to make choices into this beloved creation. We have to be able to to make our own choices if our relationship with God and each other is to be anything other than robotic programming. I think that one of the reason God is comfortable with letting us creatures make our own decisions is that God is always working to bend our choices toward the good. Nothing we say or do is beyond God’s ability to reclaim and heal and make new. Including the bad choices. The really bad choices.
Continue reading “Small Boats, Big Sea – 25 March 2020”