Then we read: "Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying 'I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?' But Jesus answered him, 'Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.' Then John consented." God asks our consent when he takes our part by taking our place.
Later, on the night before he was betrayed, Jesus poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet. He came to Peter and Peter said, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand." Peter declared, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus said, "If I do not wash you, you have no part in me." He will not serve us against our will. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon
I read of a recently converted prison inmate who was so determined to share the Good News he'd found with his fellow prisoners that he initially literally fought with one of them to try to get him to accept the Gospel. God doesn't work like that. It isn't that God requires our permission, but that God loves us too deeply to work in our lives without it.
We aren't that way, because we don't love as selflessly as God loves. If things aren't going the way we think they should, we'll try manipulating things to get our way, controlling people's feelings and responses, pulling their strings.
We misunderstand God's intentions. We still insist on thinking that God is a spoilsport who wants to limit our fun and make us miserable. Knowing what it is in our lives that we are unwilling to give up, we convince ourselves that God's desire is to deprive us of that thing. We do not see how the treasure to which we cling is worthless, and cannot fathom the joy and the love that we forsake so that we might hang onto it, while God patiently waits for us to consent that he may take our place.
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