Zigzagging

          Have you ever felt that you zig-zag through life? When you were young did you feel rudderless as you tried to find out just what it was you wanted out of life?  I did.  I did a lit of zigging until God put a better rudder within me.  It took many years to do this and along the way my path was strewn with a lot of boulders that got in the way.  The path was never straight as I thought it would be. I was naive at best.  Paraphrasing: " A man sets his ways but it is the Lord who orders it." Something to that effect.  The old soldier who zigged when he should have zagged got shot. Or so it goes.  I still find that it is easy to go my own way and I sometimes find a lot of tugging at my heart when things get out of hand and I want to chuck it all and go on into the woods!  Find solitude and peace from all the requirements that are here and now.  But I am a a family man and I am a Christian so I cannot do that and be irresponsible and do that. I have commitments and they do not just go away.  So when this feeling happens I continue to find out just what it takes to stay the course that God has apprehended me for.
   When he grabbed me he also grabbed my heart and changed it.  So my ways are no longer just that my ....ways. They are now his.  And so like the disciples who were dramatically changed after Pentecost so am I.  And I have found others who say the same thing, others who confirm that I have not gone crazy, fanatical, fundamental, right-wing, cloistered, or what ever we as Christians have been labeled over the centuries we have been around.   lt's just that now we find ourselves trusting one who created everything...and I mean everything we see and that which we don't.  I am one who subscribes to mystery who can't quite figure all things out but along the way small pieces of the puzzle slowly begin to fit together.  Sanity in a world with out sanity. Peace in a world where every day a little more of it is torn down.  Revolutions that happen that stir up thousands upon thousands to discontent and violence because of unjustness.  These things are prevalent in the world.  But the counter to that is the world that Christ preached.  And we do not yet have it.  But we try. Love one another we try, forgive  our enemies it is hard. Love your wife, your children when you have just fought them over something petty. Look the other way at an offense that derails a friendship....hard.  But it is in the very thing that Christ did daily that was to change the world little by little, Us.....though it will never be 100%.  He died violently at the hands of men he then forgave on the cross.