Lectio
“Laziness and cowardice put our own present comfort before the love of God. They fear the uncertainty of the future because they place no trust in God.”
— Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Meditatio
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were promised eternal joy, happiness, and sustenance if only they trusted the Word of God. They wanted for nothing and were provided with everything. All they needed to do was to receive the gift of Life and Love that God so freely offered them. Accept is even too strong a word because it implies effort, and no effort was required on their part. God gave them everything — He gave them Himself — and they needed only to receive it, without question or protest, and it was theirs forever. From the beginning, the birthright of humankind was God.
But Adam and Eve, like all who have followed them, were not content with God alone. They wanted more than God. They wanted to be like God without God. And this desire was and is rooted in fear, in the fear that God alone is not enough, that God will not give us enough, and that God will not follow through on His promise of eternal joy, happiness, and sustenance if only we trust Him.
Just as we so often do, Adam and Eve wanted a shortcut. They wanted more than what God offered, more than what He provided, and, even though God had already given Godself to them completely — theirs simply for the receiving — they wanted it immediately, without waiting and without effort. Waiting itself felt unbearable to them, as it so often did to the Israelites and so often does to us — to remain in stillness, trusting what has already been given even before it is seen, asked more of Adam and Eve than reaching out and taking. The irony, the tragedy of all of this, is that what Adam and Eve wanted was already theirs, but they would not or could not see it. All they could see was what they could not have, and instead of desiring everything that God gave them and promised them, they wanted that instead.
This type of laziness and cowardice plagues us to this day. Rather than receiving what God gives and rather than waiting for what He promises, both of which are far greater than anything we can conceive of or create on our own, we attempt to bypass His grace. We try to manufacture our own joy, we grasp for temporary happiness, and we cling to the finite in the hope that it will sustain us eternally when it cannot possibly do so because it is no more eternal than the fear that drives us. We look for God in all that is not God and we try to become God without God.
And how could this ever lead to anything other than toil, other than suffering, and other than death? God offers us everything — He offers us Himself — and we want more. But in actuality, we want less. We cannot accept the fact that He is everything, that He provides us with everything, and that this everything costs us nothing to receive except for our desire to have something else. And yet, tragically, our desire for something else is, in fact, the desire for so much less — for a piece of fruit we can see and hold and taste, rather than for a share of God’s own Life and Love.
What pathetic and pitiful creatures are we who desire less than God and then weep and mourn when we get exactly that which we thought we wanted. What laziness to reach for the one thing we cannot have because it is in front of us rather than receiving everything we were born to have which is inside of us and all around us. And what cowardice to allow our fear of the uncertainty of the future for lack of trust in the One who promised it to steal eternity from us before we have ever known it.
Oratio
World Without You
Lord, my life
is so small
without You
for though I can have
the world
without You
the world
means nothing
without You
but I refuse to wait
for You
even as You give me
You
Contemplatio
Notice where you still refuse to wait, still reach for something smaller than what is already yours. Let the waiting itself become the receiving — stop grasping toward what is small, and let what is infinite hold you instead. Sit with this in silence, consenting to His presence, and let Him move in you however He wills.
Related Scripture
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”
— Isaiah 55:1-2 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Silence And Humility: Abba Sisoes on Trusting God’s Timing, which turns from Eden’s refusal to wait toward the desert fathers’ patient trust in God’s timing, offering a gentler companion to this post’s wrestling with grasping and waiting.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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