Lunch after putting our eggs in God's basket!

If you’ve been wounded by others, you may find the idea of “reciprocal rootedness in others” scary. Being wounded may have taught you to be self-contained, to get your needs met anyway you can because no one else will help you. 

Without a full realization of God’s enfolding love and power, no combination of information or guidance or affection can prevent or heal wounds. Without God, we can at best become hardened and simply carry on. The primary other for a human being, whether we understand it or not, is always God. 

So even though we risk and venture out into relationships (as part of the spiritual formation of our soul), we don’t put all our eggs in another person’s basket; we put them in God’s basket. We commit ourselves to God, and with God’s leading we reach out to another. We don’t expect this other person to necessarily nurture us. We go to God for nurture. Now and then, God may use that other person to nurture us, but we receive it as from God. The Lord really is our Shepherd—even in relationships.

TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Consider risking a little and inviting to lunch (or some similar setting) someone who might be relatively new to you or with whom you have not interacted for a long time. 

Instead of thinking about what you might receive or what may happen, pray beforehand that God will work within the situation to bless both of you. If things turn out differently from what you would have liked (he says no to your invitation, she invites a third party, and so on), trust that God will work through this. 

Pray for that person before you meet, asking God to show you what you need to know to bless this person. As you converse, enjoy yourself but silently call God’s blessing on that person now and then. Afterward, ask God again to bless both you and that person, acknowledging that none of us lives unto our own self, nor do we die unto our own self. [1] See C. S. Lewis’s discussion of “The Inner Ring” and the desire to be in it as “one of the permanent mainsprings of human action.” The Weight of Glory (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973), 61.