The life examined

Reflection. Thorough examination of yourself. It's testy. Scary. Heady. Dissonant. But one has to know their self. Sometimes life presents us with situations where we're splayed open and split in two. Situations where previous thinking is rendered irrelevant or is at worst shattered. This shattering gives us a rare chance in this transient life to look at the pieces. To really examine them. To scrutinize them. A rare opportunity to look at you; to see what you're really made of. Look at it. Understand it. Know it. Own it.

Sometime life's circumstances at times will drive us to go into ourselves. This experience can be either good or bad but hopefully the outcome is positive. Hopefully you emerge a better person. Be cautioned not to withdraw so much into yourselves that you get lost and can't re-emerge. Much like the body intrinsically has what it needs to heal when cut, likewise does the mind. And those qualities won't be activated until demanded upon to do so.

There comes points when we are in conflict with ourselves. Times where don't always act on what we know. Sometimes we fall short of being what we say we're all about. This confusion about ourselves can easily give way to doubt. I however surmise if not challenge us to move beyond the battle of the dichotomy between thought and action to overcoming and conquering with knowledge and definition.

For me knowledge of myself is only revealed through knowing God. In knowing and cultivating this relationship I have an opportunity to know what the Creator intends for me, what He says about me, what He has articulated in his word as definition for things in my life of which I am uncertain. Knowledge that says as much of a good man that I think I am, no goodness of my own can ever compare or do anything to warrant the goodness that God extends toward me.  When life brings about confusion or fleeting moments that seem unclear, I'm kindly reminded of the words in Jer 29:11 that He knows the plans He has has for me and those are good and for His glory. For God is ultimately and always good. Anything that He allows to happen in my life, regardless of how I feel, is for my good and ultimately for His glory.

Does this mean that I should wallow in the unclarities of my life, that more grace may abound? No. In wrestling to understand and in seeking, I am to act on what I already know. Though I don't always understand me; wretched and depraved me, He does. Apart from Him, I by myself have no sense of purpose. I have no sense of a greater good that exist because even on my best day I'm still prone to failure and depravity that makes no sense. Any good that I exhibit is a result of knowing Him and His purpose being hammered out in me.

-WAC, III-