Measured

I like being in control.  It is not easy to translate this priority into action.  I do not think I am the only one.  As I look around me, society tends to place a conditional equation on most things in life.  Eat in moderation.  Be measured in your response to life’s difficult events.  Throttle your response to everything.  As a result, tempers remain contained, anger often finds itself masked as frustration, and accountability fades into mere impact.  Everything finds itself measured, controlled, and predicted.
 
Life does not always work as I like and that is good.  Being in control, especially when one tries to measure, predict, and ultimately manipulate the outcome of relationships at its heart removes freedom.  The parameters required to control dictate the extent one can reach, choose, and take action.  Descriptive of what happens includes words like bounded, boxed, and predetermined.  Life is, naturally more free flowing, out of control, and unleashed.  God’s reaction to life follows nature’s course; “Open up, heavens, and rain.  Clouds, pour out buckets of my goodness!  Loosen up, earth, and bloom salvation; sprout right living.  I, God, generate all this.”  (Isaiah 45.8) 
 
I find the best things in life often follow from simply reacting and acting without limits, boundaries, or control.  Love is best when it is natural, unrehearsed, and free flowing.  Compassion at its heart does not live in a box.  One does not find life changing mercy within preconditions and predictive outcomes. 
 
Even as I write, I find myself struggling with implications of my observation.  I do not believe I naturally respond to the people around me any differently than anyone else.  I doubt my ability to see the best is the relationships I have is fundamentally better or worse.  I do believe there is something I share with anyone willing to let God touch their life; we want, hope, and believe God is willing and interested in the people we value.  If Divinity loves us, Divinity also loves those we love.  Thank God, Divinity does not stop there.  Divinity loves without condition, measure, or limits.