by God's Good Grace

Was looking back at my post about my next assignment and thought I'd expand.

We all have free will. It's part of our human condition. We're given the opportunity to investigate (or not) weigh options, and make choices.

What I didn't discuss in my previous post was the condition in which I was in. And I wasn't 'in' anything. I was really out of it... Living in my own little world.

It's not that I didn't care about anything or anyone, but I think I expected everything to be very clear to me. This theory was very evident in how I handled school. I understood most of the subjects. But there were a few where I had a terrible time grasping the logic. One was statistics. I didn't have much instruction on it, but it was just enough for me to decide that I didn't want to learn. It was a portion of another class, a quality control class I think, so there was enough other material for me to regurgitate and get a decent grade. It probably wasn't a conscious decision at the time, but I see now that when I had trouble learning something, I did just enough to get by and promptly forgot about it.

The sad thing is that the same practice translated into my marriage. I didn't, and still don't, understand a lot about my wife. She had a very different childhood than I did, went to a different school, and had an entirely different family structure. Some time during our marriage, I think I subconsciously made the decision to do just enough to get by, because I didn't really understand. If I don't understand something, how can I expand on it and improve it?

What does this have to do with free will?

Even if I didn't consciously think it, I still made the choice to slack off. That wasn't God's doing. But He did see it. And eventually provided that big push to get me off my ass. And He made it painful just so I wouldn't forget. At the time I didn't think I had any choice in the matter, but I did. I could have just left.

God equips us. Gives us the strength and grace to get through life. We do have choices to make, decisions to ponder, bridges to cross. And I believe, for the most part, God lets us go our merry way. I also believe that the everyday choices we make matter a whole lot less to Him than we might think, as long as we do it with a conscious and educated thought process guided by what He wants us to do. So often my little pea-brain sees only a few options, even though I suspect there are far more available to me.

Like tomorrow. We've decided to get out of town for the day and go see something new. Does it really matter, as far as living a Godly life is concerned, with where we eventually end up? Probably not. Does it really matter that I graduated college? Probably not.

So as far as giving myself the due I deserve. I may be due the due...but as far as anything that actually matters, I certainly couldn't have done it without God.