Believe it or not, at heart, we are made in the image of God! ‘Male and female He made them, in His image He made them’. It took me three years, after coming back to faith and into the church, for this to even start to have any meaning to me. Initially it was as if I could believe in a ‘God out there’, but to accept that He was with me was inconceivable because I was filled with so many lies, and lovelessness!! And yet I knew a sense of His Light filling me when I surrendered all of my life to Christ and invited Him in to my heart. Little did I understand that all my work as a teacher had the hand of God in it, and all my aims in schools were gospel aims, to bring Light to those in darkness, and set the prisoners free. But I had hidden darkness in me too!! And I needed His work to take me beyond the barriers of my mind.
He was instructing me in my exhaustion and darkness. After one night session of facing the confusion in my mind, it finished with the words , ‘Don’t think, act’. What wisdom. God knew, I would be unable to act, with my mind whirring like a spinning top trying to decide everything from start to finish with all sorts of destructive thoughts piercing my mind and preventing me from moving forward. Like that I could do nothing constructive because there was no ‘being’, no letting go and letting God. Being is present to the moment and aware of what is and what needs to be done, and that God is God, and can be trusted. The maxim, ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step’ is a good illustration of ‘Don’t think, act’, because in taking the first step – whatever that might be – you are then in a position to see what the next step might be….etc etc…always leaning on God in humility.
When we recognise and accept that we are God’s children, and we have a Father who loves and guides us, then being becomes easy. We have the yoke of Jesus Christ who invited us to come to Him because His burden is light, and He, in His humanity, only did what the Father was doing or what the Father told Him to do. There is no condemnation, there is dialogue and love. Free will becomes choosing to love and live for God, and thus we are living the highest being we can in harmony with ourselves, others and above all with God.
But we are on a journey, all of us, and day by day we face the ‘shadow’ within us that frequently wins the battle to drag us into the pit of depression, hopelessness, or faithlessness/lovelessness. Once we are thinking only about ourselves we cannot see a way out. But this is where ‘Don’t think, act!’ comes into its own. Even the simplest act, making a drink, going to the toilet, having a bath, can lift us to life and being. But we need to stay present to where we are and be willing to be led by the Holy Spirit of life. We need to keep praying and choosing Life. And also, if you are prone to workaholism like me, you have to be willing to open your heart to other forms of being – music, gardening, creative activities – all of which provide for balance and love in our hearts and minds.
Above all we need to praise – to trust that God who knows all, is, and will lead us forward at the right time. And activities which at one time seemed mundane and boring, take on a new dimension when ‘the work of our hands’ become vehicles for praise, thanksgiving or the simple Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me/us’ beating in our heart. When we rest in the Holy Spirit of love, guided by Christ’s commandments it is simple to believe, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being,’ and we are not afraid to let go and act in the knowledge that God will guide us.
