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“Sometimes we blame God for his lack of concern, while all the time what’s missing is our urgency.”

A thought by Erwin Raphael McManus from his book, The Last Arrow: Save Nothing for the Next Life (p. 100). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

I know, I know.  It is so easy to blame God for not coming to our rescue but maybe it isn’t up to him.

Erwin says, “We expect God to act but we never take responsibility to act ourselves, which is why so many of us never get down to that last arrow. We decide that playing it safe is the reasonable choice. We tell ourselves that only fools would believe that their best future would exist in a place of their greatest danger. What we can be certain of is that God is never apathetic. If there is apathy involved, it is ours. What in fact might be in play is that we haven’t prepared to receive what God wants to give us. It is unfortunate, but far too often it is desperation that creates openness to the provision of God. And beyond a desperation for our own survival, we are best able to receive God’s abundances when we move outside ourselves to the needs of others.”

Later he says, “Fear is like a leprosy that eats away at our souls, and it will lead us to build fortresses that look like security and safety. Fear convinces us that we have locked out the dangers that would befall us, all the while blinding us to the fact that it hasn’t locked the world out at all. Instead, fear has trapped us inside itself. It was never a fortress; it was always a prison.

“Everything changes once you have stepped into life. Everything changes once you’ve experienced the goodness of God. Everything changes once you see how the universe is designed for abundance and not for scarcity. It not only changes the condition of your life but it changes you.”

He finishes this section by saying, “When we step out of death into life, there is no waiting for daylight. To hide what we have found, to hoard what we have been freely given, would be the greatest crime, an incurable leprosy of the soul. If for no other reason, we need to choose our most heroic lives, because a world desperately needs to see what it looks like to be fully alive. What the world needs most from you is for you to be fully alive. You and I, we needed proof of life to find life, and now we must be proof of life to those desperately searching for it.”


Let’s not play the blame game but let us get into the game of life and really live it.  So would you today step out and live a life that is fulling alive?
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