Mercy!

There's a somewhat overlooked passage in the middle of Romans

where Paul says,

"The only thing that counts is not what human beings want or try to do

[that's the first half of life],

but the mercy of God

[that's the second half of life]" (9:16).

But you only realize this is true in the second half of life.

You had to do

the wanting

and the trying

and the achieving

and the self-promoting

and the accomplishing.

The first half of life is all about some kind of

performance principle.

And it seems that it must be this way.

You have to do it wrong before you know what right might be.

These deeper voices will sound like

risk,

trust,

surrender,

uncommon sense,

destiny,

love.

They will be the voices of an intimate stranger,

a voice that's from somewhere else,

and yet it's my deepest self at the same time.

It's the

still small voice

that the prophet Elijah slowly but surely learned to hear

(see 1 Kings 19).

~R. Rohr