Pre-destination: or The Future is Bright

Can it be that I have let so much time slip by since my last blog?

It could be because I am now in Michigan in our little old cottage on the Big Lake, and having travelled across the country dodging dust storms and tornadoes, am now safely ensconced in this little piece of paradise. More on that soon! I plan to be blogging at least 3x a week now that I am finally adjusted to Michigan. It is quite a change from Arizona!

For today though, I want to reflect on an old fashioned word which has special importance for the Christian/Calvinist tradition: PRE-DESTINATION. I was inspired to reflect on this word and its possible meanings by a piece of a Mother's Day Sermon in which the minister was quoting "The Weight of Glory" by C.S. Lewis. He reminded us that every one of us human beings is destined by God to reflect more and more of God's glory, forever and ever. No matter what our present flaws and failings, our destiny is to be the true Image/Representation of God. C.S.Lewis says that if we were to see someone as they will someday be when they have become all they were meant to be, we would be tempted to fall down and worship them!

Now the meanings more often associated in Calvinism with "Predestination" are something else. The doctrine functions to try and explain why some people seem to believe and live faithful, good lives, and others do not, even when they have ample opportunity to know and love God. The explanation is that God, in His inscrutable wisdom, chooses some people to be "saved" and others not, for reasons not available to our understanding. Underlying this view is the belief that humans really don't have free will....they are so conditioned and influenced by their inborn and flawed human nature that they really can't choose for God or good unless God grants them the grace to do so. And God, it seems according to this view, is picky.

Now I do not want to debate this perspective in this blog, but I do want to say that I have big problems with it. Instead, I find it is helpful, encouraging, and joyful to focus on predestination as the truth that each of us humans has a destiny so glorious as to be beyond our imaginations.

Here on this earth where we "see through a glass darkly" even the best of us manages to reflect but a smidgen of the incredible BEauty/Glory/Goodness/Love of God. But as we go through this life and life after this life, whatever that may be, we will all eventually come to BE, fully, the Image and likeness of God we were created to be, and that will be glorious beyond belief.

Now I cannot prove this, or disprove it, and neither can you. It is something I freely and gladly chose to believe, because it gives me hope, and helps me to see myself, and others, (especially when they are acting like anything but the Image of God!) with "future eyes." Rather than dwell on what is wrong with me or others, I can realize my and their potential, which is God given and God ordained. Because God is Love, God desires the very best for every one S/he has created, and the very best is a marvelous destiny indeed.

With this is mind, I can let God's Promises and destiny for me and others shape my present perspective. Then the question becomes "How can I live in such a way that I am constantly expanding and expressing the qualities of God/Good in my life, and how can I help others do the same?"

I love the pictures I posted as expressions of this truth. One is of my little grand daughter Daniella, who, to her grandmother's eyes, is already expressing a LOT of God in who she is. The other is of a painting of Mary Magdelene as apostle of the Risen Christ, and to me, this picture is another revelation of the glorified body/soul that is aready ours as a seed of Divine Potential within us, and will someday be full grown in us and as us. Sometimes, when I am not feeling good, I recall that I already have a "Glorified body and soul"----and when I focus on that truth I feel a lot better. Until I forget.

May you remember, often, your Divine destiny, and that of others too.

If you, or they, are "falling short of the Glory of God" --- its temporary. Its a stage, a learning curve, a piece of the past. A time will come when even the memory of "what's wrong" will be gone, a shadow swallowed up by the Light of the Divine Destiny that awaits us.