As I sat for my morning meditation,, quiet time or prayer time with God, whichever you want to call it; I had an overwhelming urge to just not do it. I just didn’t want to. I wanted to do something else: read a novel, bury my head in marketing, bury my already dead self in the soft warm feathers of the Twitter bluebird.
I hadn’t the least shred of desire to read my bible or pray, but I did anyway. It’s been a life long routine for my new life these past twenty-five years.
I wasn’t mad at God or even the least bit irritated, but my desire had flown the coop. I know your thinking, Well doesn’t everyone have these wanes of desire?
Well, Yes, but I didn’t even want it back, and wanted to go do something else.
But, I read anyway (My bible, not Twitter):
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me? Jeremiah 32:26-27
It was that one word, THEN, that got stuck in my teeth. Has that ever happened to you?
Have you ever just not wanted to hear from God? But He wanted you to hear from him.
THEN what? Wow! God can sure pack a punch with even such an insignificant adverb as THEN.
Lot’s of questions came to mind, not my question but God’s. I’m not a kook, take my word for it... but I do believe in God speaking to us through the bible, prayer, preachers, validated prophets and even books and blogs that have nothing to do with Him. God can and probably does speak audibly to some people, not certain special people, just some people. He’s not a big blabbermouth like me, but from all reports he doesn’t use many words when He does speak.
I continued to read Jeremiah,
Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it. --Jeremiah 32:28 NKJV
OK, now I’m starting to shake in my boots, and thought to myself, I sure hope those succeeding verses are not as true today as they were then.
That’s when I felt like God spoke to me.
“I don’t do things that way any longer.”
I could lean back with my black coffee and go, “Whoa dude!” or I could fall on my face and build a shrine. I took another sip of reheated, twice, coffee, thankful that most likely my life wasn’t going to crash and burn before my coffee got cold.
As with many times when I felt God speaking, His words contained way more than the factual meanings those eight words conveyed.
Somehow I felt absolved of my crime of what I now realized was the simple ebbs and wanes of our faith and relationships. All our interrelationships are that way. Why would we expect our communications with God to be any different?
Sometimes we feel like a nut. Sometimes we don't.
We run hot and cold. Bottom line often is we simply get bored.
If I step back and consider the immensity of this faith we are in, not the religious trappings we surround ourselves with, but the realness of relationship with the Master of the universe, it will or can stun me back into a new freshness of today.
Sometimes.
Today though, I still felt kind of complacent so I took a sip of cold coffee and wrote this blog.
I hope your days are filled with much peace and truckloads of grace,
M
