Don’t take yourself too seriously. That’s just a backdoor definition of humility and trust in the Lord. But it’s also a warning not to trust your own human abilities, neither in establishing ideals nor in reaching them.
It’s utterly impossible to go back and fully dig out the worldview of Moses or Jesus. We simply don’t have enough detailed data about them, nor their worlds. What we seek is not some iron-clad assurance that we have the fullness of what they had. Rather, we seek as much of what they had as God will grant us. We trust in the Father to help us rediscover however much of their worldview as we need to please Him.
In other words, it’s not possible to objectify anything about His expectations. It’s totally personal and frankly subjective. You are the only one who can know whether you are at peace with Him.
Further, it’s a moving target. What pleases Him in one context may not be enough the next time you are in a similar situation. It’s developmental; the whole point is that you grow in faith. Further yet, it cannot be shared completely between any two of us. We are convinced there’s an overlap between incidents and between persons, but peace with God is inherently dynamic. It requires constant attention and devotion. It’s never finished.
Even if it were possible to objectify peace with God, it’s not possible that any of us could be so fully ready at any moment that we could grasp it wholly. We are always behind the game, no matter how much we think we have accomplished. It simply makes no sense to pretend it can be objectified, because we can’t really get it anyway. This is why we say that Radix Fidem is a bit like phenomenology: All we really have as humans is experience and perception. And what we have experienced is never fully understood because our perception is broken. We are forever trying to make sense of our limited experience, never mind what that experience may or may not tell us about ultimate reality.
So we repeat this principle often: Reality is fungible. That is, your limited understanding of reality is as valid as mine. We thank God that He has allowed us some ability to commune and fellowship, so that we can compare notes to some degree. But in the end, we are each on our own, standing before Him as unique individuals. It’s not that we can’t share something about our individual perceptions, but that the very nature of being fallen is a hindrance we can never overcome in our human existence. We cannot even define reality with any hope of a conclusive answer that isn’t subject to modification, and we certainly don’t have the means to share even what we have in any conclusive way. All we have is the limited ability to cooperate with each other, insofar as He grants us to do so, and only for as long as His grant is valid.
Everything we have in this life is provisional.
The amazing reality of my life is that I live it by each moment as it presents itself to me. Above, beyond and outside of that moment is completely out of my control. Only my inner thoughts, my mental/mind frailties and faults interfere and they are way too frequent but certainly not in control of me. I am grateful for that. It didn’t take a virus to keep me at home; I am way too in love with my home to want it any other way. And now, let us hush and listen to His Voice.