Aweikinin, 14th of December, 2015

Psalm 15 and John 15

H,

I have always thought that all the high talk of living in the grander plan of God must start with the quieter times of intimacy. If I am colouring up the language to look cute or speaking in that way that puts knowledge gained after the fact as a priori, then I am sorry. I think the last sentence may even be closer to the truth. Have we all not struggled to be “hearers and doers” of the word in fast flourishes? We run before we even start to walk with God. Then we fall down and begin to doubt our worthiness for the path of grace. It is called the path of grace for a reason.

You and I are no strangers to the whimsical nature of gathering up epiphanies in God. We are those runners who end up in the dust soon enough only to hear the bitter laughter in our own heads about how our fall from (or off) grace must have looked like to the eager spectators. As we approach the older forms of our lives on earth I think we now have enough bruised and battered knees to take on that word and song with a new heft: “not my might, not by power…”

It really is not. For it is the wisdom of God to tell us who we ought to be and then show us how to become exactly that. In that sense we are like children who listen to their father giving them instructions on how to engage with the outside world and then leave when they think they understand all He is saying. Then we go out and get beaten quite badly. We return home and realise He was still talking. He says: “as I was saying…” and continues from where we left off. I am sure it is not as mechanical as all that. God has poetry to Him. It might may be that this talk is more of a hang out where we sit and learn and experience the love. The presence, the daily prayer or meditation or scripture reading, and ideally all of the above, is us learning how to engage with the world. It is not limited to that space we call “quiet time” and I am reluctant to use that term because it is often done as a rite of passage, something to get over and then move on. It has to be a sort of dwelling. It has to have value. It has to be a place you want to visit. It has to be user specific and intimate and draw from a personal relationship. The Holy Spirit has to be alive in you. He has to lead you to all truth on a daily basis.

This is not going to happen in one day. We are going to struggle with it. Yet, it is the beautiful sort of struggle. It begins when we realise that all the great things in God cannot be done outside the continual presence of God. It ends when that presence it not merely continuous but now abiding.

Amen.

Tomorra.