Trapping Pride – Conforming it to Reason

I’m being honest with myself when I say there are times when I feel like giving up on some of my occasional extraneous relationships, like when I’m tempted to go the wrong way in ‘solving’ the problems they cause me.

Some people’s responses to us or their situations—or the ventures we’re both involved in—can be so off-putting, distracting us from our preferred purpose: to love in this world without any encumbrance. (That is, if we’re so disposed to the love that is in, and from, God.)

At these times I have to quickly let God remind me that my pride’s again escaped from the jar and I need to quickly snap the lid back on it before I let this situation further confuse or torment me, which also potentially will infuse the outcomes with less savoury results.

So What!

We’ve given our best and it doesn’t seem enough—in other words, it’s proven again we cannot control other people – so what!

Others won’t listen to our reason (which of itself smacks of pride) – so what! Ironically, we also aren’t listening to them. We have, therefore, only received back what we deserve.

They have the upper hand – so what!

The ‘truth’ we’re espousing is not making one iota of difference to them or the situation – so what!

There are very many more ‘so what’s.’ Reason is suggesting to us, “So what!”

Coming Back to Reason – Which is the Truth

The truth is, the recovery is so much more important than the chided response; the endless argument.

Reason allows us to ‘cop it sweet’ for reason has a longer term perspective in mind—a perspective that those who may be present don’t have in their inner chuckling, which says, “I won, I won, I won,” or “Who are they to think they’re right...?”

Reason has reason to humbly smile—quite apart from the moment—and to simply go beyond the emotion involved into a realm open to pure logic.

Reason asks, “How important is it, really?” “Is it worth being further confounded by this or is it time to just move on?”

Accepting God’s Best

God’s best is almost always not our pride-filled ours. They’re different. There’s not any correspondence to be entered into. Our maturity is being tested.

Maturity is strength of spirit—not to stand unbuckled many times, but strength to remit to others the love of God, especially in the mix of the difficult things to accept, of which there are many.

If we wish to enjoy the rest and the pleasure and the lightness of God’s gentling Presence we need to allow him to wrest this feeble complaint from our hearts, and inject us with a cogent dose of courageous humility for the moment of reconciliation—whether that be with people or within simply ourselves.

Getting back to our God-filled ‘preferred purpose’... the only way we can love as God loves is to accept God’s best; many times people have, and will, upset us. We must accept this and love them anyway.

They have not won. We all have.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.