God Can Manage

My life lately has been exciting. I've been dreaming with God, and gaining vision and direction from Him. It's been a a wild, tiring ride filled with thinking and praying and growth.

There has been very little rest.

I am reminded, sitting here on my sofa, wrapped in a soft, fuzzy blanket, that God worked for six days, bringing the world into being. Then, on the seventh day, He rested.

And there was morning and evening the seventh day. 

I sometimes get to thinking that God needs me; that I am crucial to the success of His plan. I do believe that I am unique, irreplaceable and important, against all odds of my birth into sin, chosen for something great and lovely. But I also believe that I am loved beyond all reason, completely apart from the things that I accomplish.

I don't hold the whole world in my hands, God does that.

I had an evening this week which did not have an agenda. I struggled against that, feeling the lack. I like to be busy, to be doing, accomplishing, working. But I feel a beckoning, of a sofa, a book, a slowing of my whirring mind and heart.

I rest.

Not well, and not easily. I still flit a bit, to and fro. But as I do this, I am reminded of a great and seductive lie which I tell myself sometimes, heard second, third and fourth-hand from those who wish to destroy me:

God can't manage without me. 

To say it out loud is to laugh at the pretension, but still, it underlies some of the things I do on a regular basis. Related, almost entwined is this:

If I am not useful, I am not loved.  

When I recognize these thoughts and capture them, I can rest without guilt. I can rest without effort. I am loved and held and chosen and known, not because of me, but because of God.