God’s Song, My Work
I’ve been reading Kenneth Lincoln’s Native American Renaissance, an important early study of 20th century Native American literature. But when Lincoln describes the Native American view of poetry as being a witness to a pre-existing song (as opposed to European notions of creation and ordering), I thought of our lives as Christians. God has been singing his song for thousands of years. We are simply empty vessels through which the song resonates — living flutes, as it were. Our lives are not so much what we make of them as what we allow of God’s song to blow through us.
It’s calmly reassuring to me to think about my work this way. My research and dissertation are already existing in God’s mind — they are part of the song God has been singing for centuries. I am not responsible for creating the song. I am only responsible to transmit it faithfully, to witness to what God is doing in the world.
May I be a faithful singer of this glorious song. Amen.
My Life Is Not My Own
(I usually write things here and then post them on GCN, but this time I worked in reverse — I guess it’s easier for me to come up with ideas by responding to other people….)
I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately, as my life is completely up in the air and almost completely out of my control for the next few months (academic job searching — God is in control and that’s all I have to work with).
I don’t own my life. I have no rights to it. I didn’t create myself, nor do I have some kind of independent existence outside of the world.
No, I am here only because God created me, knitting me together in the womb. I am not even the result of biological chance (sperm gets lucky, etc.). Instead, I am wonderfully and fearfully made, crafted by the God who creates all that exists, visible and invisible.
But I am made with a purpose. My life isn’t really mine to decide what to do with. My life is a gift in that God chose to give it to me. But it also a gift in that I did nothing to deserve it. If I am to use the gift in the manner it was meant, I must allow God to instruct me in the ways I should go.
I want to be God’s. Wholly God’s. To serve no other master but the Lord of Love and Prince of Peace. I want to be an instrument of God’s reconciling and healing presence in the world. I want to draw people closer to Christ, to help them walk by the Spirit of Christ, that they may truly be brothers and sisters of Christ. This is the calling for which I (we) have been made.
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The more I contemplate our life in Christ, the more I realize that Western culture has been way off the mark for the past 350 years — all thanks to the predominance of ontological individualism (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!).
We have been brought up to believe that we exist as individuals, that we have inalienable rights as individuals, that our existence has some sort of stability outside of the world, outside of our communities, even outside of God.
What if all of this is wrong? What if the entire foundation of modern Western culture is a falsehood?
What would happen if we, as the Church, truly stressed our created-ness and rejected the claims of ontological individualism? What would happen if we gave up our claims on ourselves and acknowledged a radical dependency upon God, for our every breath and our every thought?
How would our lives change? What would we have to give up? What would have to take on? Where would we come into conflict with the world around us?
Our lives are not our own.
Thanks be to God!
