Breaking Solo

I am breaking ranks a little bit and not going to actually write about anything out of the past week in Solo. Instead I figured I'd talk more about what God is doing in me. Because the truth is, what God is doing in me has a lot to do with this week in Solo, and every week for that matter. Because it has to do with me consciously setting aside time to be with God, to listen, to read, to engage. That is what this week and every week in Solo are about to me. Engaging a God that wants to be engaged.

A couple of weeks ago I was struck by the reality that most of what I do, I try to do by myself. And by struck I don't mean lightly reminded, I'm talking about being smacked up the side of the face with a three day old fish kind of struck. Somewhere in the core of who I am there is a constant struggle for relevancy, for power, and for significance. Rather than explain what I mean, I am just going to tell you what I see it doing. This struggle bleeds itself into all I do and all I know of myself. No matter what I am involved in, the struggle is present, haunting me with echos of inadequacy and inferiority. So I am always looking for security, in everything. Why is it that we feel like we have to be in a position of security before we act on or do anything (thank you day 23)? The more I look at my life the more I see me trying to create my own security. All over my life I see the marks of me living and acting alone, even in the places where I claim to do it for God. Somewhere in my head and heart there is faulty wiring. I feel like I am amassing armies for my own security, when God is actually saying, "Send the army home, I want the credit for this one."

Don't get me wrong, I don't suppose that God is against careful planning and best utilization of resources. But how easy to fall in the trap of letting everything be about those resources, or the assembler of those resources (in the case of my life, me). Now, back to where I started. The Roberts Security and Resource Collection Plan seems to be most in effect when I am not engaging God. Because in a mysteriously beautiful way, engaging God leads me to being engaged by God, to learning to set aside my agenda, to finding new importance for resources I didn't value before, for seeing my relevance in relation to humble submition rather than personal accomplishment. It gets me away from me and lets me be led by God.