Entering In

It always surprises me how easy it is to create a 'closed system' with myself...how relatively simple to shut the world out...how uncomplicated to find stillness with everything moving around me... and all with a simple pair of earphones!

I am starting to think these little speakers fit to my ears are...well...magical *grin*

I love the morning....I know that puts me in the minority, but I do. Seeing dew on grass, glistening away, reminds me that each new day is birthed into newness and streches its arms for the first time into the breath of God's creation and into His Glory... It feels alive with movement and awakenings...birds singing and trees rustling... and even with the scurring about, you can feel the residue of the night's stillness lingering on the earth....smelling as sweet as a new baby's skin...glowing and whispering and inviting..,

I think we are invited into each day....to truly enter in as if we were stepping into the pages of a great and whimsical storybook...leather bound, gold script, and watercolor images.... the invitation lasts all day...I just feel it best in the mornings...

Beth and I had a discussion while driving home one day last month, that made me remember my lost love of mornings...a conversation that struck my heart so that I began to miss them....I made a pact with myself to begin to wake each morning and enter in... (I want to post on that conversation sometime, be looking for one titled "You are What You Eat")

I stepped into this day after awaking to the faint sunshine that exists only in the mornings...the faint light that seems to drift as effortlessly as a breeze into the windows of the sleeping... do you know what kind of light I am talking about? If you don't...set your alarm for about 7:00am and when it beeps at you, turn it off, open your blinds part way, and lie back down. Let your eyes gaze around the room, drifting from the floor to the celing and around your bed...and just drink it in. Doesn't everything look magical? alive? pregnant with hope and possibility?

I awoke and wrote my hubby a note and packed my computer and Bible and fatty blue journal and walk a few blocks to this coffeeshop. I don't know about all of you, but in my house its so hard for me to get still...(even with magical headphones*grin*) There is always picking up to do, always news on the TV, always a myriad of distractions.... my pact to take time and nurture my heart involves the physical action of getting up and leaving the time stealing lures of my home to find a physical space where I can get alone.

This is that physical space for me.... at my favorite table, with my things spread out, and the Robbie Seay Band creating a worshipful space in this closed system I have become.... this is my space.

I spent some time reading and asking God to speak to me...wanting to see Him, to hear Him, to experience Him...

I felt myself move toward the door to enter into this moment...this day...this provision of God for me...It took a couple of times, you know... I started to read and then people came in the coffeeshop with their newspapers and suits and some were having meetings and most were talking. I couldn't hear them, but it kept me from really entering. Then I was reading, but not connecting. We all know this feeling, right? When the distractions transition from outside of us to the ones inside of us...an anxioius heart...an overactive mind...physical pangs (hunger etc)...These ones are more frustrating because we feel we have less control over them. Its easier to move location to a quiet place where we can be alone, but its hard to deal with yourself once you get alone. Trust this me...I suffer with both on overactive mind and an anxiousness that seems arise from nothing other than my genetic makeup!

I felt my insides fighting as I stopped to pray and begged God to help me journey into this day genuinely. After some time (that is key), prayer released my spirit-

These are the real victories, friends!,...the small, everyday ones where the real you- your spirit man, your inner man- where he/she triumphs over the rest of you...your emotions, your will, even your body by the stength and grace of God at work in you! We should celebrate these moments... Sometimes I think if we did, the Enemy of our Souls would find less footholds... you know, this is the morning of tangents, but oh well...I feel compelled to say this... follow in love and obedience and celebrate the working of God in your heart in the smallest of ways so that you don't forget how He is changing you...renewing you...restoring you! When you feel your heart being obedient, when you notice a change...no matter how seemingly small...stop and thank God...stop and take time to notice the moving and working of God...it will keep you free and keep you grateful and keep you mindful of the real battle that is not between flesh and blood, but is within the spirit world...

Church, we need to remember what the real battle is...what it really means to walk with God...its less about following some moral code and more about following God...its about listening and connecting and falling in love....its about sharing with Him and participating in His holiness and being led by His Spirit...we make it about so many more tangible things...things we can measure and check off a list...and you know why? Because its easier...and you know who delights in that? Our Enemy! Because even those 'right' things can be distractions....its really the ultimate deception...to take our eyes off Jesus onto a way of living...to move our hearts from deep and unshakable wonder to tasks...from compelling love to a code of morality... if we fall into this trap, we never enter into life...life abundant! the kind of Life that Jesus died to give you...the LIFE that He IS!

So much of Christianity anymore is a club of people who are standing right outside an open door, watching LIFE on the other side...analyzing it and arguing about it and writing about it and preaching about it and acting as if it were a science to be broken down into parts and recorded in a obersvation log...God knows how guilty I am of this way of living... Its time for us to quit fanning the flame of our egos - our opinions- our theology and TO ENTER through that great doorway (JESUS) into real life. Something tells me if we were doing that we'd have a lot less time to argue with each other about baptism and the Spirit and communion and predestination... The all-consuming Presence of God would enrapture our hearts so that all lesser loves and thoughts fade into the background of His "I AM" Personhood.

Step through the threshold, sweet fellow journeyers... If your days have become stale...if you have lost that first love...if you have forgotten the sweetness of the breeze upon your face...if enchantment feels like child's play...if you are tired of living to check off the tasks in your day...if have never known that the JOY of the Lord is a real experience...

Let's drop our pens and charts and exchange our reasoning for something better... feeling the Brightness of His face like the sun on your heart as you lie in the good pasture and drink from that still water...kick off your shoes and follow Jesus into the heart of the Lover of your soul...the Author and Finisher of your faith...the One who left the rest to come and find you...the One who birthed you into being...the One who has never stopped pursuing You...the One whose load is light and burden is easy...

I could go on...but I leave you with this...Love you dearly...praying for you...