Excuses, Excuses

As I sit here, devising exceptions to the requirement of servitude I’m called to as a believer, convinced that my life as a minority and a woman has afforded me a sort of birthright, I’m struck forcefully and head-on with the question of what my counterpart must be thinking. What excuse has he—or an extremely-privileged she—concocted on a moment’s notice for the reason that they have been sufficiently humbled for their respective station and suiting?  While mine settles around a fresh, collective memory of chattel slavery, and men who would rather end their own lives than bother to give me mine, what is the trump card in my counterpart’s proverbial deck? 

Is it a sense of entitlement provided by a different story that has been told about and ascribed to them? A story of exceptionalism and priestly exaltation; is this the one?  Is it some unknowable knowing that their mercies and graces and abundance were earned?  Is it that, while the average is well-known and widely accepted, this life—theirs—is an outlier having gotten less, actually, than its just desserts and living quite humbly already, thank you.

It is here in this moment, that I collide with His divine reality.  In a short, shallow breath, eternity fills my lungs to bursting, bringing His fullness into better focus. And it is here that the whittling of the carpenter begins again, shaving away the unnecessary layers, freeing up the gluttonous, superfluous space I’ve been taking up. A skilled craftsman, He moves with precision and purpose, carving away the callouses I’ve allowed to collect around the perimeter of the person He saw when He descended to me from on high.  

It is in these places that I see Him again, expectant. I have not found Him reposed in a dark corner, relying on the element of surprise. No, as I walk back through the open door of His workshop, I see my Father engaged in that way that is only His.

Divine diligence. 

He is a God at work: moving, making, molding me into hands and feet that will move and make and mold. Not to the same degree or with the same field of vision, to be sure. It may only be so that I have the means to prepare fallow ground, or plant a proper seed, or gently water with that eternal elixir with which He has filled me up. 

Once again, He faithfully fills me up.

Either way, it is for His glory.  Whatever it is, it is the fruit borne of work that I have witnessed to be good. And in response to His goodness, it is a toil that I take up, too.  I am a mirror reflecting His efforts in me, a pond carrying the ripples of His righteousness out from the center and into creation so that another may reach this moment: a multiplication. Though sleepy-eyed and out of sorts, I am here to once again work in concert with His will. It is a cosmic collision that lays His nature and His love bare. And so, with a start, I am awakened from my spiritual slumber—forgive me, Father! I was so tired!

Excuses, Excuses.