Wishful Thinking

DOUBTS ARE THE ANTS IN THE PANTS OF FAITH.  THEY KEEP IT AWAKE AND MOVING  -  Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner is a poet, a scholar, and a theologian.  He writes and says things in ways that rings true in our hearts and our uttermost being.  Here are some excerpts from his "Wishful Thinking" that should stir our imaginations for God and challenge us to a higher way of seeing and doing:


1.  When it comes to prayer, "Even if God does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself.  And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for?"

2.  "We condemn in others the wrong we don't want to face in ourselves."

3.  "We think of eternal life, if we think of it at all, as what happens when life ends.  We would do better to think of it as what happens when life begins."

4.  And here are words of Buechner that are so mysterious, so sweet, so powerful, I lose my breath at the reality of what he says as God's spirit is like a fire in my bosom or belly.  Buechner writes,

"When our faith is the strongest, we believe with our hearts as well as with our heads, but only at a few rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed by light."

Unless one has been engulfed by light and has experienced 'the Holy,' one will have no idea on earth what Buechner is talking about since only those who have been touched by heaven like this can truly know what it means to be embraced by the fire of God.