“Oops!… I Did It Again”

Is it just me, or do you too think about that 2000 Britney Spears hit a lot? I sat down this morning to have a little “quiet time,” and as I did, I started beating myself up because I haven’t done this regularly enough. I’ve had school, family in town, “pastor-y”stuff, on and on… So the thing that I let slip (again!) was my time for just being alone, centering, getting away from all the outside and looking deep inside. “Oops! … I Did It Again” as my pal Britney would say.

This is not the first time that I have neglected my “quiet time.” When things get busy, it seems my time to work – just on me – is the first thing to go. And then I feel so bad about it. I beat myself up, chastise myself, give myself the riot act!

This morning, as I was singing Britney’s lovely song and regretting that I haven’t been more diligent to sit still, I came across a great reminder from Richard Rohr that even though I might be like Britney Spears, doing the same thing again and again, never getting it “right” or being “good enough,”there is grace for me regardless.

Any way we receive the Spirit is just as real and just as good as any other. God meets us where we are and makes a healing and expanding presence known to us in the exact way we are most ready to experience it. God fills our hearts in whatever measure we are open to the Spirit, just like any true lover might desire to do.

And when grace does happen, we know that we did nothing to deserve it. It is God’s pure graciousness ‘or grace would not be grace at all’ (Romans 11:6). It is what makes people fall in love with God. So be open to surrendering to such ‘radical grace.’ God’s love is never determined by the worthy or unworthy object of love, but only by being true to who God is in himself. ‘We may be unfaithful, but God is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self’ (2 Timothy 2:13).

-Rohr, Richard Adapted from Great Themes of Scripture, pp.90-91