God Begins Things
To believe God for something significant can feel foolish.
Especially when we see no movement. Or the circumstances actually seem to be going in the opposite direction of the desire.
I think it’s easy to give up.
Give up on a prayer. Give up on a dream. Give up on healing. Give up on transformation.
After all, the desire can seem daunting, and at times, quite ridiculous.
To believe God for something significant can feel foolish. Especially when we see no movement. Or the circumstances actually seem to be going in the opposite direction of the desire.
There’s no doubt when it comes to healing between men and women, it’s the same. Every day when I worked on Capitol Hill, I saw, and often experienced, the divide between us. It shows up everywhere in professional life. The way we think. The way we communicate. The way we relate to one another. At our best, we respect and work together. At our worst, we don’t. We, instead, can devolve into control, manipulation, sexual harassment, or worse.
As a young twenty-two year old, in my first job in Congress, I was sexually harassed. However, I was so naive and inexperienced that I just thought that it was part of the professional experience. I did nothing. Certainly, I didn’t call out the perpetrator, much less than to seek to heal the divide growing between us.
It’s from experiences like mine that niggling resentment and suspicion can grow quite significantly over time between the way we think about, and relate to, one another as men and women.
Many years later, while I was working in the Senate, through the countless conversations I had with men and women, and my own experiences as a woman relating to men, God began something. He unveiled a growing interest and desire to see healing — not more resentment and suspicion — come to men and women.
He revealed His vision of reconciliation.
He began something.
He started to peak my interest of what it could look like for two disparate people, who are not the same, but who God created to be in flourishing, healthy, mutually-respecting, and life-giving relationships. Whether at work. Or at home. Or on the ball field. Or sitting in a meeting together.
Wherever we are in our thinking and believing, God tells us He has created us “very good.” To live together. Not against or in competition with one another.
Next week we will look more at this. More of God’s view of our creation and our living and being together through the unfolding vision He was beginning to show me.
