potentiality

'Do you think you'll have reached Malachi by the time we retire?' asked Andy a couple of days ago. He was, of course, referring to my bible tour - currently still at Genesis 12.
'I can't think like that,' I confessed. I can't think of that in such a huge way. I need to enjoy it wherever I am on the journey.

I am enjoying it. Now that I've 'upped the intake' from twice weekly to daily it heightens my senses to the themes I'm reading about. I read the passage, make notes on it, read through the commentaries, making notes on anything that strikes me, and then may even scribble down further thoughts - a personal response, in a way, to all that I've studied. And I love it when I am suddenly struck by something.

I was reading the Brueggemann commentary and he was writing about Sarah's barrenness and lack of potentiality, saying: 'This God does not depend on any potentiality in the one addressed.' As sometimes happens with me, this opened a thought channel which I happily roared down... I've been thinking, even struggling, with ideas of potential fairly recently. Some struggle with what others consider lack of potential. others, having been told they have potential in what ever way, encounter limiting circumstances, or life being somewhat different than they imagined, and feel on some level they have lost something. That they have let themselves down.

I know sometimes I have worried that previous 'potential' I have had is lost. As Margaret Atwood says in her novel Cat's Eye, 'potential has a shelf life.' I was very struck with that line at the time because it was what I feared to be true. However, this morning I scribbled delightedly in my bible reading journal:

Our human ideas of potential and loss of potential lose their significance in the light of God's calling. Any potential or non-potential within ourselves is irrelevant when it is God who calls and when we put our faith and hope for the future in Him.

It doesn't matter, I thought. Not when God is in the picture. He is not foiled or fazed by my abilities or talents or amount of 'potential'.

I think we often carry little fears with us which wrap like bands around our minds. They prevent us from experiencing the true freedom of faith. But then when revelation comes, we hear a sound like splintering glass. Losing its grip and denied any strength, the fear falls to the ground and shatters into pieces.

Then we hear the sound of laughter.

And we realise it is our own.

Energy levels: 5/10
Headache: Medium

Yesterday: 4/10, low-medium