“Will you live for the dot or the line?”  The dot being my short life on earth and the line being eternity.  In many ways, that thought translated into my vocational choice. Today, as I was reading a little e-book by Calvin Miller, The Disciplined Life, that idea got challenged in a fresh way.  In it, Miller discusses both materialism and busyness. Since my theme for the year is “editing,” his section on time and the use of it caught my attention.

 ”God is always present tense.”

When I first read this, it kind of jarred me. He cites the times that Jesus said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…”  Jesus did not say “I was…”  What Jesus always says about Himself is, “I am….”  Miller goes on to say that “God’s time is kairos.”

We live in chronos, the sequential passing of time, that dictates so much of our lives- having to get here or there, rushing around to meet deadlines.  We are occupied with the activities that make up our lives. We become wrapped up in the dot.

If God’s time is kairos t...

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Beth Booram, who has written a really good book called Awaken Your Senses, posted this quote from Irenaeus on Facebook today.

“It is not you who shapes God, it is God who shapes you.
If then you are the work of God, await the hand of the artist
Who does all things in due season.
Offer God your heart, soft and tractable,
And keep the form in which the artist has fashioned you.
Let your clay be moist,
Lest you grow hard and lose the imprint of God’s fingers.”

      As I read this, I realized keeping my heart soft is a challenge in the midst of lots to do, and in the midst of leading others.  At times, I can shut off my heart in order to plow through things that must be done.  By the time I’m ready to let down and respond to Him, I can be too weathered, or hardened to re-capture the moment of need.

How would you finish this post?   What steps do you take in order to keep your heart“soft and tractable” in His hands?

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Today I’m on overload– too much to do, not enough time to do it.

Albert Bridge [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Thoughts of unfinished tasks, decisions to be made, come rushing through my head like a flash flood- unstoppable.  Capturing them on paper only seems to aggravate the feelings.  As I”m pausing to write this down, I’m reminded of two things.

A number of years ago,I watched a skit at a retreat.  It started out with a woman sitting across the table from someone representing Jesus.  They were having a conversation about her day when the phone rang.  Immediately you could tell that there was some crisis that she needed to address.  As she stood up and began pacing around the room, you could see a bag tied to her ankle.  Every step she took the bag just dragged along behind her.  At the same time, the Jesus character walked alongside her, trying to get her attention, tapping her shoulder.  “Not now!” she exclaimed.  “Can’t you see I have so...

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Just as I am without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me,

And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,

O Lamb of God I come, I come!

I was listening to this hymn last night and was struck in a fresh way about the simplicity of following Jesus.  Here I am, with all my sin, no righteousness, no merit of my own to claim; yet, He welcomes me.  Somewhere inside, there is still this part of me that wants to think there is some merit of my own.  It doesn’t show up overtly, but in the little ways that I can try to pursue perfection, the ways I try to get things in order before I come to the Lord.

The reality is that He knows everything about me- He has woven me together in my mother’s womb.  He has given me both strengths and weaknesses.  He knows the places where I can believe Him easily and the places where I turn to follow the “stubborn inclination of my evil heart.”  He invites us to come to Him in the midst of our messes, not when they are cleaned up, because God sees us through Jesus. I can’t get o...

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     When I was growing up, we lived two doors from a church.  We lived in its shadow, literally and figuratively.  Holy Week was very solemn, focused on the sufferings of Christ. There was no running around or yelling or loud anything.  On Holy Thursday, we had a service and then the altar would be stripped bare.  All linens, candles, any adornments of any kind were removed.  And there was silence.  No bells were rung, nor music of any type played or sung. No television or radio in our house. On Good Friday morning,the church was open, and people would come to meditate on the passion of Christ and worship. We remembered Christ’s journey to the Cross later in the day.

The silence and the starkness are what I remember most. The church, dark, quiet, a tribute to the sufferings of Jesus, was such a change from bells ringing three or four times a day, people laughing and chatting after a service.  On those days, there was no talking, no laughter, only the sobering thought of Jesus dying on the cross...

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