Christ grows and nurtures our “living soul”

What challenges human beings immediately is that we are born, fortunately or unfortunately, with little real understanding of who we were created to be. We might get glimmers here and there of something greater than this present life. But mostly we tend to follow the paths of others, competing and scrambling, finding ways to hold close what is ours.
We hear, and generally accept, that we live in a “dog eat dog world” where “the early bird catches the worm.” Human beings also behave, at times, like “fraidy cats.” And we are usually aware when we’re craftily weaving “tangled webs” of deception and selfishness. At some point, though, each of us slams into the wall of the very natural existence that we’ve so willingly embraced—we’re leveled by its unfairness and unconcerned randomness.
When this happens, we all have our own stories to tell—of poverty or failing health, dissatisfaction or disappointment or loss. You know yours; I know mine. What we eventually discover is that operating as frail, isolated creatures, scurrying around on the surface of a planet makes less and less sense to us.
And so we begin asking questions and looking for answers. When that happens, God has us where He intends us to be. If physical existence were the Creator’s only purpose for our presence here, we wouldn’t be able to look up and beyond nature, to wonder what’s “out there,” to imagine the something “other” than what’s here.
Even when we try to resist, when we attempt to argue ourselves out of the very things that our heart is telling us to embrace. Even when our thinking and believing get all confused or distorted. Even when we’ve lost our faith or never had it in the first place. Behind it all lies the Creator’s grand intention—the growing and nurturing of our “living soul” for eternity.

I wonder what I would be if God did not live in me. Would I dream? Would I wonder? Would I even hope to own a soul through eternity? Wouldn’t I wander off in fear, seeking always, far and near, pushing and shoving my way along, without a purpose, nothing that rings true and clear? (Living Calm 2016)