Everyone operates based on some set of ethical principles. Most often there are a number of sources for this: your upbringing, your culture, your church, your job, your personal preferences, what you read, what you watch and listen to, who your friends are, etc. I know people like to say that their ethic is based solely on the word of God but this not usually true (how many of us have sold all our possessions and given them to the poor?). The truth is, what we read in the word of God informs and influences our ethic, and it often takes the stance of seeking to overcome some of the other influences I just named. It is important for us to recognize two things:

1. what our ethic is right now

2. what we think it ought to be

We have to be really honest with ourselves to make that first recognition and we can only begin to move toward inplementing the second to the extent that we have honestly assessed the first. So how about it, do you know where your ethic is?

The other day a friend was praying for me and got this word from the Lord:

You have so many shoulds in your life. They are robbing you of your freedom. The Lord doesn’t do shoulds.

That word was very accurate and well-timed (as you might expect when the Lord speaks). I have so many shoulds in my life – I should have done this, I shouldn’t have done that. Dwelling on those has become a hobby, an obsession on the past that robs my focus and energy for the present, the moment, the now that is all I have and all I am responsible for.

This is something I already know mentally, but need to learn to put into practice. Dorothy Day first taught me the importance of doing what comes to hand, to “be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.” (Loaves and Fishes, p.176) With all moments before now, I have either done wrong and need to repent, or I have done well and need to remain humble about that. But all of those moments are gone, only now matters.

There is no should, then, there is only what was. I may need to receive (or give) forgiveness, but dwelling on where I think I went wrong avails me nothing. In fact, it does the opposite. It takes away my ability to enjoy my freedom now. It becomes one more way to procrastinate and avoid the freedom that I am secretly (well until right now) afraid of. I don’t have to fear my future or my freedom.

Neither do you. The Lord shared this word with my friend specifically for me, but I think it might also be good for some of you to hear as well. I like that our God does not do should.