On Having One's Own Way

I thought I'd share with you my "on-the-john" reading this morning from George MacDonald:

"The liberty of the God who would have his creatures free, is in contest with the slavery of the creature who would cut his own stem from his root that he might call it his own and love it; who rejoices in his own consciousness, instead of the life of that consciousness; who poises himself on the tottering wall of his own being, instead of the rock on which that being is built.

Such a one regards his own dominion over himself--the rule of the greater by the less--as a freedom infinitely larger than the universe of God's being. If he says, "At least I have my own way!", I answer, you do not know what is your way and what is not. You know nothing of whence your impulses, your desires, your tendencies, your likings come. They may spring now from some chance, as of nerves diseased; now from some roar of a wandering bodiless devil; now from some infant hate in your heart; now from the greed of lawlessness of some ancestor you would be ashamed of if you knew him; or it may be, now from some far-piercing chord of a heavenly orchestra: the moment comes up into your consciousness, you call it your own way, and glory in it."

Amen, and heck yeah. I'm so quick to fall in love with my own ideas, impulses, and desires--and I needed this today to re-orient me around what is true, right and good.