“We must name the competition for our attention and our affections: will it be like it was for Eve, ‘the delight of the eyes,’ or will it be what satiates the soul, this God who reaches within the boundary lines to meet our little girl and little boy hearts with wonder and delight, even when we can’t have what we want? Especially when we can’t have what we want.”- Sara Hagerty
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”- Matthew 16:25-26 (ESV)
Sara Hagerty concludes Chapter 4 of The Gift of Limitations as she counsels that God grows us in a gentle way. In addition, limits function as one of the best ways God captures our attention. As a result, God calls to our attention our craving for what we cannot have. Next, He brings that craving into the safety of trust.
Above all, Sara reminds us, we need to name our limits — or we live captive to them. Hence, living captive continually diverts our attention form how God wants to meet us. He wants to meet us within the fence lined life to what we just can’t have. Even though. Sara admits, the process might be ugly, that closer look allows us to recognize and name our challenges. The first step toward freedom. But if limits stay unnamed, we default to looking at the panorama beyond the fence. But God never settles for our default self.
In conclusion, Sara offers these thoughts on brushes with God:
“Maybe the brushes with God become cumulatively better, better for my waking and my sleeping and my staying present and my passion for pursuing God and my marriage and my friendships and my vibrancy of heart that if I could create them myself out of my daydreams. I think Jesus is that good, that worthy of our wild and wide-eyed attention.”
Today’s question: How do you respond to this God who reaches within your boundary lines? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Reach lower than the sky?”
