This Isn’t A Punishment
by Donavon L Riley

God has a strange, old-fashioned patience, the kind that won’t leave us alone yet won’t force itself on us either. He waits, holding an ancient ferocity in silence, watching for even the slightest turn in us—a flicker of willingness, a crack in the brittle armor we build to defend our frail pride. What He wants is nothing less than for us to wake to ourselves, to the dust and hunger that lie beneath our masks. He wants us to see, as if for the first time, that we are nothing without Him—that every ounce of goodness, every stray spark of light within us, is His gift. There is nothing in us that can bring forth good on its own, no virtue we could cultivate apart from His hand planting it there, like a seed dropped quietly into dark soil.

So God moves, in ways only He knows, like a restless wind slipping through the closed doors of our hearts. He presses mercy on us in a thousand unexpected ways, a whisper here, a memory there, a dawning awareness that perhaps we have not understood ourselves at all. Sometimes, His movements are so subtle that we might miss them, a quiet nudge toward humility, a glimmer of understanding we didn’t ask for. But other times, His methods are wild and almost unbearable. He sends us reeling under burdens we did not choose, dragging us through trials we’d never have chosen for ourselves. He lets us stumble through the fire and feel its burn, not because He wants us to suffer, but because He knows that it is often suffering that shakes us from our self-made stupor, loosens our grip on all that we mistakenly think makes us strong.

His love is unrelenting, and it will not let us hide in the shadows of our pride. Every illusion, every brittle defense we clutch like a shield, He will strip away until we’re left standing bare, raw, like vessels waiting for Him to fill. This isn’t a punishment; it’s an invitation to finally, deeply, know ourselves as He has always known us—small and weak, yes, but also capable of holding all of Him. It’s in that emptying, that humbling descent, that we become ready for the fullness of His grace. And it’s only when He has cleared the space in us that we find what we could never offer ourselves—a love that fills our cracks and transforms our hollow places into something beautiful.

In this way, God’s tenderness is as fierce as it is gentle. His love is a fire and a balm, a hand that digs deep into the soil of our hearts, tearing out what doesn’t belong to make room for what He has prepared. And so He will continue His work, drawing us ever closer to the truth we were made to embody. For what He wants is nothing less than to remake us, again and again, by His mercy, to mold us until we reflect the depths of His grace, the richness of His love, and the humility of those who finally know their strength is not their own.