My spiritual exercise for this morning was to imagine a perfect me in a perfect world.
It was great! No more struggles or stress or frustration. No more weighing decisions and wondering if I should do one thing instead of another. No more need to consider if I should cultivate more virtues in my life. I would already know the answers! I would already know what to do! I would already be perfectly virtuous! I was giddy at the prospect of perfection.
Then doubts began to creep in. If everything was perfect, including me, what kind of life would that be? I’d never experience the joy and challenge of learning. I might never be surprised again. What would happen to the thrill of adventure?
When it comes right down to it, if I had a choice, I would choose an imperfect me in an imperfect world. Ok, granted I don’t have that choice. I suppose I could be bummed out that no matter how hard I try in this life, I’m not going to be perfect. The world isn’t going to be perfect. Yet scripture tells me that I’m a part of God’s good creation. That even in the midst of imperfection, humanity and the rest of creation is pleasing to God.
So my prayer today is to embrace my God-given imperfection – to bring creativity to situations where frustration might otherwise set in, to cherish eccentricities in myself and others, and to be okay with striving but not yet arriving.
What are your thoughts about imperfection? Feel free to type them in the comment box below (and no need to worry if your spelling isn’t prefect)!
Archived Comments
- January 17, 2012 at 1:27 pm
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Our “perfectly great minds” think alike! Life would be unbearably dull if everyone was perfect. There would be no opportunity for growth. No joy in new discoveries.
- January 17, 2012 at 3:45 pm
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Yep, Barbara! Also I find that when I accept my own imperfections, even as I strive to improve, I’m happier. What’s the zen saying — something like, Life doesn’t disappoint us. Our expectations do.
- January 17, 2012 at 1:50 pm
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Was just thinking a bit ago about how I’m glad I’m still learning and don’t have all the answers. It’s good to be imperfect.
- January 17, 2012 at 3:48 pm
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I agree, Regina! If we knew all the answers, there would be no need for creativity — hard to imagine never having the feeling of the light bulb going on!
- January 17, 2012 at 3:09 pm
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Lines from Tennyson’s “Ulysses” – - having to do with never reaching the goal??
“I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life pil’d on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is sav’d
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
. . .
We are not now that strength which in old days
Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”This poem has come to be very significant to me in recent months — it speaks to me of accepting that we never arrive at the destination, but that to stand still is give up and accept that we will never reach the goal . . . so, for me, accepting permanent imperfection means also that we never seek to strive for it . . .
- January 17, 2012 at 3:53 pm
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Awesome, Marsha! Sounds like a good poem to live by
- January 17, 2012 at 11:35 pm
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many years ago, i was strucked with this verse ” Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” I thought then that perfection is being able to do many things, to cultivate ourselves and learn as much as we can from this world. To be the best that we can imagine ourselves to be. But now, I think I am living a different light with me. Perfection comes not in being perfect by the world’s standard. Perfection comes in being WHO what God wants us to be. In doing what He requires of us at each moment. To be perfect as our Father is, we need to align our will to His will. To die to ourselves lest we lose the opportunity to be perfect in His eyes.
