Good morning,
The workshop has been active. A few pieces went out from the past few weeks. You can find them below. For the full archive, the site holds them all.
It’s been a while since I sent a weekly review. The articles listed below are the ones posted since the last one.
So, what’s been happening in the quiet:
Those prayers we sometimes call the “dangerous” ones, the ones that feel like handing God a signed permission slip for your own breaking, He has been answering them. In full. Not in the way you imagine when you whisper them in the dark, but in the way a surgeon answers a plea for healing: with a scalpel and a stark light.
They have lines like these in them:
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
And:
But if necessary, restrain us forcibly from doing so,
Even if such a necessity must strike us as suffering and pain.
When we “seek, knock and ask” to be remade in the image of His Son, He does not sit us in a seminary lecture. He leads us to the mirror of our own failures and says, Look. He puts us in the precise situation that reveals the rot we politely called “character.” The transformation is the learning. The fire is the lesson. It is disorienting. It feels, often, like punishment. But time pulls back the curtain. The path behind us reveals the cause and effect of a faithful Sculptor who answers the prayer we meant, not the one we uttered.
He is treating us as children. He is restraining us forcibly. And the steadfastness being produced has the taste of blood and sanctity.
The anchor for the week, the verse that has been the weight in my pocket:
«Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away.»
James 1:2-8,10 ESV
When we “seek, knock and ask” God for help in becoming more like His only begotten Son, Christ Jesus, He doesn’t sit us in a classroom to talk and read about His Son. He puts us in situations that reveal to us where we are than to transform us into what we’ve asked to become. The transformation is the learning. In my experience He doesn’t “teach us” in the way we expect or would prefer. It can seem disorienting in the moment. But as time pass and we look back at the path we’re walking, we can see His reason, the “cause and effect” if you will.
Walk steady!
That is all, and thank you for reading.
Here is the record of the work, the articles from the bench:
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Thanks for your time and support.
Shashue Monrauch