Ups and Downs

Warning: fairly personal posting ahead.

I've had lots of ups and downs recently. Within the last week there were days of great events alternating with days of inner turmoil and messiness. Today was a great day. I had been running recently from relating fully with God -- you know how it is, giving a little but not all. I prayed, read the Bible, asked forgiveness, but I continued to run errands when I sensed I needed to be worshiping. In fact, in the past few weeks I've really sensed a need to rest in the love of God. Thankfully, due to my deaf ears, God kept raising the volume.

Two days ago I read John 15, including verse 9 where Jesus says: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love." The author of the Bible study I'm doing notes two huge messages. One, Jesus loves us with the same love with which God loved him (i.e. a lot) and two, we are told to "abide," rest, dwell, live in that love.

Yadda yadda yadda I said. I'll get to that soon.

Frustrated with some poor choices I'd made, I opened the book of encouraging notes my church had written and read one which reminded me to "fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith...so that you may not grow weary and lose heart." I half-heartedly thanked God for the message and moved on, continuing with my self-condemnation.

Then my friend Erin wrote on her blog about my home church's women's conference this past weekend, and its focus on"God's extravagant love." Okay, okay, just let me get a few more things done first, or feel sorry for myself and nap, whatever.

Then another friend wrote to me that she had flipped past a radio station which talked about "working so hard to please HIM that you miss out on HIS love." She told me that maybe I "should just stop and let God love [me]." This is a good friend of mine, although we think very differently on spiritual topics -- for example, she doesn't have a church background nor does she go to church nor, as far as I know, does she routinely listen to Christian radio.

Right, pretty important if God's working this hard to get through to me. Just let me finish my expense reports, then tomorrow morning I'll get serious about it.

I woke up today and after spending a few hours praying, and more to go, I realized I probably wasn't going to get any of the work done that I had planned. But what a great day.

Sebastian in El Delta

Towards the end of the day I had to go to a friend's house to feed and walk her dog. I kicked back a little at her house to keep the dog company, and read from Corrie ten Boom's Not Good if Detached. If you're not familiar with Corrie ten Boom, she is a Dutch woman who spent nearly a year in prisons, labor camps, and a concentration camp for her work during World War II helping Jewish people escape from the Nazis. Out of her entire family, she was the only survivor. A week before her sister died in the concentration camp she told Corrie, "We have a message for the world. From experience we can now tell that a child of God can never go so deep into darkness that he will not always find beneath him the everlasting arms that uphold him."

I could go on to quote the whole book, it's fabulous. Pick up a copy at your local used book store today. I will content myself with quoting the reason she wrote it: "In this third book I have included some things I have learned through meeting a great variety of people around the world, but more of the things He has taught me who said, 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.' Connected with Him in His love, I am more than conqueror; without Him, I am nothing. Like some railway tickets in America, I am 'Not good if detached'."

Evelin in El Delta