Birth Blueprints

How did things come out with your birth plans? Did you get all you wanted out of that project? Did you pick the right birthplace, parents, and situation in life? Ridiculous questions! We weren’t calling the shots of our beginnings. We have influenced things later in life. Having the freedom of choice in some things, we shape and form many aspects of our lives along the way. We are the architects and builders for some things, but not for others.

On this journey, we convince ourselves more and more that we do have control, and that we can will many things to happen. This tendency gets into our spiritual inquiries and pursuits as well. We convince ourselves that we can construct our tower into the heavenly realm. We forget the wise serenity prayer. The shortened and familiar form of the prayer is as follows:

God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change...
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference.

It is indeed wise to discern the difference between things we can affect and things we can’t. It is spiritually wise to ask God for serenity, courage, and wisdom to navigate our way through things. Very often, we simply build our little structure of religious thought, and feel as though we can manage things earthly and fleshly, and manage as well things heavenly and spiritual on our own. Wouldn’t that be nice? Do we really think we can take over the things of God, as if to say, “I simply will do A, B, and C. to obtain X, Y, and Z? God has things to reveal to us. We can no more manage our entrance into life in God than we managed entrance into life in the world. Such an admission makes the conversation from The Gospel according to John, 3rd chapter, quite interesting. It is a conversation between an accomplished Pharisee, Nicodemus of the Jerusalem Temple, and Jesus the Galilean rabbi.

Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” (John 3:3-9)

Here we are wooed into discovering that God initiates our second birth, from above, giving us life in the Spirit and that we are helpless to do so. We do not hold blueprints to spiritual life. Our formulas for spiritual birth affect nothing. We honestly did not initiate our natural birth into the world either. Jesus reminds us that we know there is wind by hearing its effect through the trees and against an object, by feeling it on our skin. Jesus assures that the Spirit is at work, though we do not see it. It takes faith to trust in the Spirit. We don’t know where it comes from, nor where it goes, but we know the Spirit has the power and the will to give us birth from above. We will go on with our spiritual practices and mental frameworks, and they will help us in many ways. Our true life in God, however, comes from God’s blueprints and actions of God within us, as we open ourselves to that life.