What I do, I do because the Father has gripped my heart.

It’s not a question of what should I do, how should I do it, or if I should do it all. I am who I am because it is a response to the solid grip he has inside of me. If he should somehow decide to let go of my heart, maybe I would be different (God forbid). But I don’t think the Father is in the business of letting go.

When blessed Francis approached these men he said to them: “Tell me, I beg of you, where does Lady Poverty dwell, where does she feed, where does she lie at midday,” for I am faint with love for her?”

No one begins by wrestling with God. They begin by wrestling with themselves. The struggle turns inward before it turns upward. Jacob wrestled with his identity, calling, family, and masculinity before he wrestled with God.

What if, in all this talk about transformation, the whole point was not about making you more whole or healing past hurts, but preparing you to bring healing to others? As your heart begins to soften to the heart of the Father and you begin to look like him, you are drawn into the radical responsibility of embodying the heart of the Father to His creation.

Looking all the way back at the beginning of this series we said that when Isaiah caught a vision of the beauty of God it ushered him into a transformative journey. However, the place of undone-ness is not where Isaiah stays. He moves through catching the sight of the beauty of God (I saw the Lord), coming to grips with what his lack (I am a man of unclean lips), into brokenness (being undone), but that is not where he stays.

If Peter, James, and John could have visited their younger selves while on the road to Jerusalem, and later while they stood defeated by the sight of Jesus hanging on the cross, they may says something like, “Keep your eyes on the Father and don’t give up!”

Jesus said something profound about the character and nature of God when he called Matthew to follow him. As he was sitting in the tax collector’s house, many people came to him. As the Pharisees watched this they questioned his willingness to meet with the lowest of the low. After all, if he was a great man, shouldn’t he only consort with great men?

Seasons of transformation carry much uncertainty. Questions of the unknown abound: Where am I going? Who am I? How am I going to survive? Will people like me? The questions we end up asking are not of the garden-variety kind. They are deeper, requiring much greater sensitivity and care to approach.

Once, three brothers caught a vision of God and dedicate their lives to serving Him. The first brother left for the city and dedicated his life to counsel people with broken relationships. He desired to take the words of Christ to be a peacemaker seriously. The second brother found many sick in the city and dedicated his life to caring for them. The third brother forsook everything and left for the desert to seek God in silence and solitude.

Transformation begins, is sustained, and ends with catching a sight of the beauty of God. Ah, life.  That grand purveyor of untidiness and chaos.  If it weren't for life, most of us would be perfectly happy.  But then life happens. The thing about life is that if flows from the human heart, with all its wildness therein.