Patricia Hofer

We each have an “individual relation to God.”

DO NOT WALK IN GOD’S WAYS ON SOMEONE ELSE’S BEHALF. For me, this Bambara wisdom from West Africa is telling us not to carry the burden for another person’s relationship with God. … As George MacDonald wrote: “Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else. Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship him.” (GMD Anthology, CS Lewis, pp. 8-9)
So, as much as we might at times try, we’re not meant to carry the burden or responsibility for another’s righteousness. God loves each of us uniquely and specifically. We’re His. As MacDonald wrote, “In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter” (9).
(As quoted in Turning Aside to See, chapter 17, ©️ 2011)
[I now mentally substitute “person” for “man.” That’s more comfortable to me in this context.]

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