Just some thoughts on a rainy afternoon

Just received this in an email. Thank you Father James!

"God never forces His will on us, which is exactly what He would be doing if He revealed it in lavish detail every day. Instead, He allows us the freedom to discover His will through our being open to the people and situations that He brings into our lives daily. God does not want slaves whose only choice is to obey Him or incur His wrath. He wants us to become a people of open hearts, willing to love and to serve and to go that extra mile with others, even when it is inconvenient for us to do so. Make no mistake, it is often inconvenient to love and to serve and to be open to the many unplanned and unexpected things that come our way. This is where the conflict with our own personal 'rules' is frequently encountered. We do like our day to go a certain predictable way, and we dislike interruptions to our routine or unusual demands by others. As such, we are not generally very open to the will of God intruding into our lives. We like order--I’m afraid mostly our order--and aren’t keen on anything that threatens this. What I’m suggesting here is that anyone who would follow Christ simply cannot afford to live this way. If we insist on life going according to our rules, we will always miss the will of God and the many little miracles that might change the course of our lives, directing them toward heaven. It would be good for us to adopt the prayer of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow which says in part, 'O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. […] Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that thy will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and feelings. In unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by thee.' There is a bit more but this gives us the general idea. The good archbishop reminds us that the will of God is revealed to us every day, but seldom forcefully or directly as if on tablets of stone. More often it is gently revealed through the people and the situations that God allows the day to bring. If our eyes are closed to this revelation, our hearts will likewise be closed to the will of God. We will never see the presence of Christ in any difficult person or inconvenient situation. We will only see the difficulty, and will fight against it. This is where the brilliance of the little monastic rule shines through. Whenever someone asks you to do something for them (And we might add, whenever some circumstance or burden is placed upon you) make every effort to do it or see it through even if you don’t want to, for in this way we often find ourselves doing God’s will instead of our own. Notice that this little rule doesn’t require us to possess the insight of a saint, just an open mind and heart, and a willingness to comply more than complain. This is hard enough for us, but no one ever said that being a disciple of Christ would be easy. It is assumed that we must wrestle with our own will a bit in order to follow Christ actively. If we look through the scriptures we can easily find countless examples of people--from Abraham to Moses to Jonah to Simon Peter himself--who discovered the will of God only by doing what they did not want to do. Why should it be any different for us? Is our life more precious, our routine more sacred that we simply can’t afford to be inconvenienced by Jesus? I would suggest that we can’t afford not to be! This life is simply too short for us to focus all of our attention and energy onto it. We must serve our God while we can that we might find life everlasting in Him. +To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."