Upper Loft Meditation - Romans 7

“I do not understand what I do,” cries out Paul in Romans 7:15. “For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate to do I do”.

This is a constant human predicament with seemingly unlimited mileage! We use this passage to peer deep into our soul’s closet, as we should, but it also sometimes taints and colors our nobler intentions.

How many of us have been overwhelmed by the sheer daily nature of life or the seeming impossibility of the Great Commission ? We’re constantly overwhelmed by the stubbornness of broken relationships, destructive lifestyle choices, and the downright raw human decay of society we see every day. Those of us in the office, and the many volunteers who took the time to help judge this year’s essay contest on “Compassion and the Working Child” were able to get a an eye-full huge gaping window view into the depravity that is child labor. Yet, many of us still are very adept and skillful at distancing ourselves from the victims of such destruction.

It is overwhelming to accept that judgment is righteous upon crass indifference, self-centeredness and a weak display of spirituality in our daily lives. We’re overwhelmed when it seems that our years spent in passionate and sacrificial commitment to a cause - the kingdom of God - barely warrants two minutes in the pulpit of a church or only two lines in the back of the bulletin.

We’re overwhelmed to realize that we ourselves blame this ’cause’ for anemic commitments as friends, spouses and parents. Forget stopping to smell the roses; with our utilitarian eyes we don’t even see the roses. Utterly focused on doing, we have lost touch with being. In these areas and more, it’s easy to be overwhelmed.

Why then are we so seldom overwhelmed with all that God is?

“What I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” We’ve nailed it when preaching or singing about Him but, mano a mano, when it all comes down to it, with all that weighs us down in life, something is lost in translation. That something just might be what Francis Schaeffer called “the mannish-ness of man”: our humanity. If only we all could, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer urged, “give up the foolish task of trying to be saints, and get on with the more important task of trying to be human.”