On a flight recently I read an interesting statistic: less than 5% of the
world’s population have ever flown in an airplane. Hard to believe, isn’t
it? Especially when you think how routine flying is to most of us and even
to our children. We live in such a privileged society, so often not
appreciating the givens.

We typically don’t think about our good health if so blessed, only taking
notice when we have pain. We take for granted having food to eat,
complaining when we’re hungry or thirsty. Days of beautiful weather go
unnoticed but how we grouse about the cold and rain. We accept so much love
and kindness yet focus on the hurt and pain in our relationships.

We often think we don’t feel God in our lives. “Why is it she has these
remarkable synchronicities or feelings of His presence? Why don’t I receive
such blessings?

But is it that others are blessed or that we just don’t see the blessings in
our own lives?

Perhaps HaShem has not given you what you have asked for. If so, join the
human race for thankfully He is too merciful to give us all that we may
think we want. (Many good genie-in-the-bottle stories come to mind.) Could
it be that what you want for your life is not in His plan for you? But what
if your life is filled with pain? How could that be something He would want
for you? By our even asking, are we not presuming an expectation rather than
an anticipation, a subtle but meaningful distinction in any relationship? Is
asking a big part of your relationship with Him?

Have you ever been in love with another and consciously left room in the
relationship for the mystery? If so, anticipation and surprise enrich the
intimacy as opposed to unmet expectations which create disappointment. Such
is our relationship with our Abba. To the extent we remove the expectations
and gratefully accept what is given, we are as His bride.

Our Abba is in relationship with us to serve His greater purposes, sometimes
in ways we can see, and at many if not most times not at all in obvious
ways. Anticipating His presence at those times when we don’t sense Him is
how we show our deepest love of Him. For when we can love Him then, when it
seems most impossible and He the most remote, we experience the mystery of
His love for us. It is at those times that we recognize that if He were not
in our lives, we would not be able to bear life at all.

Life in Him is most richly lived when our love of our Abba remains the
inscrutable mystery of loving not with expectation, but rather, with
anticipation and openness to only what He can know. His love of us is
steadfast yet unknowable, always there, strongest even if seemingly
imperceptible when we are the weakest, more revealed as we leave space for
trust that He is so real.

Shabbat shalom.

Diane