Metra has been warning commuters that the Adams Street entrance to Union Station will be closed this weekend. Commuters were advised to use the Jackson and Canal Street entrances.

This seems to be an apt metaphor for my spiritual life: I’m always inconvenienced by the work God is accomplishing in my soul. Such feelings of inconvenience are not a time for despair or sadness. Rather, I consider them as moments of grace. Here's why:

God is at work. I am being built into a temple where I can offer God perfect praise. This requires that the façade I have hidden behind all these—all the monuments I have built to honor everything that I have accomplished or achieve—have to be torn down.
God is leading me. Until the construction is completed, I will have to follow the Holy Spirit as she leads me to alternate entrances, that is, new ways of thinking, seeing, and believing.
God is challenging me. The Holy Spirit will lead me to question my assumptions about who God is, who I am, and who my neighbor is, and she will challenge me to love them—God, myself, and others—freely and completely.

“This is the time of fulfillment the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

The kingdom of God must look like the work being done outside the Adams Street entrance. A lot of things are being torn down and new paths are being led so that God can flow more freely among us in the world today.

And while it may be inconvenient, the promise alone of what God’s finished project will look like is liberating.