The amount of pain in your life is directly related to the distance between your reality and your expectations.
Just consider, for a moment, the times when there has been hurt and disappointment in your life. The reality was devastating precisely because you had reasonable expectations that things should be different.
The intersection of our reality and our expectations results in pain ranging from irritation to angst. Often, one has a shot at changing both one’s reality and one’s expectations. However, there are times when neither one’s reality nor one’s expectations can be changed without assistance from the communion of the saints. We need one another for the hearty, hefty task of internal—and external—transformation.
Reformation, transformation and personal and institutional change take grit and courage and community and, most of all, faith.
What new way of being, what new person is God calling you to be? With the help of the communion of saints, go for it.
This message is adapted from “Another way to be” by Anna Madsen in the January/February 2017 issue of Gather.
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