Risks of faith

Many more hours yesterday with my feet elevated. I believe I'll get the "all-clear" from the screening today, and it will be good to have it official. God is so good.

I read more of Addiction and Grace by Gerald May. "Living the reality of grace," as I quoted yesterday, requires action. "The purest acts of faith always feel like risks. Instead of leading to quietude and serenity, true spiritual growth is characterized by increasingly deep risk taking. Growth in faith means willingness to trust God more and more, not only in those areas of our lives where we are most successful but . . . at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded, and weak." I want to be still enough to hear and see which "acts of faith" God is calling me to take. Surely this kind of living-out-grace becomes very individualized. It seems spiritually deadening and boring to limit ourselves to trusting God in those areas where we are most successful. But it's still tempting to avoid taking faith risks at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded, and weak. (How silly! As if our own competence were the safety net in case God should fail!) I guess it's all a matter of hearing Him first.

I'm going to the office this morning, and to radiology this afternoon. I trust there will be no blood clot, and we can proceed with plans to drive to Florida on Wednesday. On the way to the conference, we plan to stop at the SIM retirement village in Sebring, Florida, to see many friends there. It's an amazing community; most of the "retirees" continue in ministry as they are able until they drop. And how they pray! A Christian radio preacher, now dead, used to visit there and called it "the doorstep to heaven." We had planned a visit there more than two years ago, but had to cancel when severe hurricanes struck. Then cancer took its turn. So this time, we hope, we can make it.

Have a great day.
Carol