Faith Venture

Anne Lamott told this story, “I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat.”

Some of us have personalities that love control. We all know the control-freak bosses and teachers. They drive people like me, who are more of an independent type, crazy. These people, aka micro-managers, trust no one else to do a good job and tell us what and how to do everything. I can imagine them telling God the things he got wrong when he invented the universe.

Some people give up control. They let other people control their lives. They live in fear that they will be trampled by chaos, but they do not feel up to the responsibility and power to grab the reins and guide those horses. They look for someone strong to grab control.

One group won’t let God be in control; the other group doesn’t trust that God is in control.

God, however, doesn’t care what we think. He did start this whole thing moving and knows where it’s going. Trust that.

This entry was posted on October 27, 2020 at 7:31 am and is filed under Disciplines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.