Make it happen?

This morning, I was just pondering Bradley Whitford's quotability, and the unexplainable fact of my having omitted this in my previous post (all sorted now, worry not) when I first dragged my thoughts back to the task in hand - reading the next section from John Eldredge's Walking with God.

In which he mentioned the curse of Make It Happen.

Which is, if you think about it, a bit of a coincidence, since probably the most quoted piece of Bradley Whitford wisdom is from his Commencement Speech to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004:

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen -- yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

Just to be clear: I love this quote, find it inspiring, and could probably (and, let's face it, will) blog about why at some stage. There is much good about it, particularly the part about making grace happen. I like that a lot.

But I did just think it was odd that John Eldredge and Bradley Whitford chose to mention this to me on the same day. (Kind of.)

And then, the very next page I read was about how God uses coincidences to speak to us. In our walk with God, this is the critical moment. Too often we merely say, "Wow. What a coincidence." ... and then go have a sandwich. We never do anything with it. And so we lose the gift God is trying to give. Or miss the warning He is sending up like a flare.

I doubt God was warning me about my drivenness. Time was this would have been necessary, but these days my tendency in life is to while away endless hours tweeting about the West Wing and hitting refresh on Facebook, neither of which, as a far as I know, are a recipe for becoming a famous author or for building Church.

John Eldredge's point, though, is that he has a tendency to strive, to do things his way, rather than rest in God's love (and allow any activity to flow from that). It is a valid point, a good point, one we all need to hear from time to time.

Bradley Whitford's point, I think, is fairly clear, and could have been sponsored by Nike: just do it. Is he wrong? No. Of course he's not wrong.

Both messages have their validity; and at different times in our lives, we need to hear each one. But through the coincidence of two unrelated people making opposite points in my head within five minutes of each other, and then the coincidence of reading about coincidences, I do think God might have been speaking.

Test everything, the Bible says, and hold onto the good.

I think it's safe to assume that everything includes Aaron Sorkin's scripts and Bradley Whitford's commencement speeches.

I also think it's possible that this is what God was gently reminding me of this morning.

the power of weddings

Over a year ago I bought a book called Walking with God, by John Eldredge, with whom some of you will be familiar - his most famous book being Wild at Heart, an invitation to Christian men to plunge into adventure and not content themselves with being "nice guys". It took me a year to read his A sacred romance, which, in the same vein, calls all of us to live with God as our Treasure, not to content ourselves with being "nice Christians". It was good stuff, beautifully written, but dense, and uncomfortably challenging at times - hence, I suppose, the year that it took me to get through it.

On my shelves I also had Walking with God, which I realised not long ago was also by John Eldredge, but looked like it might be an easier read, so I brought it on holiday with me.

It is indeed an easier read, consisting of in bite-sized chunks - but in many ways it's no less challenging. It's subtitled Talk to Him. Listen to Him. Really. and it points us to a life of intimacy with God, using the lessons which the author himself has learned, or been reminded of, over the course of a year. I whole-heartedly recommend it.

But none of that is the point.

Today, I have been reading about how We can get so locked onto what we don't have , what we think we want or need, that we miss the gifts God is giving.

Ouch.

I've been at a wedding this weekend. Now, officially, and I thought unofficially too, I'm "fine with the whole singleness thing", had almost resigned myself to it for good, though I've taken a couple of steps recently which would belie this.

But nothing focuses the mind on what you don't have better than a wedding.

And yet, there I was, wearing a beautiful dress I didn't have to pay for because I'd worn it as a bridesmaid last year, surrounded by people whom I can now call lifelong friends, whom I love very much and am so grateful for. Eating tasty food, drinking wine I thoroughly enjoyed, and the whole thing in a beautiful venue - the hotel where Hugh Grant takes Renée Zellweger for a mini-break in Bridget Jones' Diary.

I need to open my eyes to what God is giving me, not to what He isn't.