It's been almost 2 months since my last blog....I guess the hits to my blog must be pretty low :-)
Anyway, I have been too busy! Life has a way of doing that to you sometimes....or should I more accurately say, that I have a tendency to get too busy. Last week I had my 21st Christian Birthday and it made me pause and reflect on my life and assess where my past year. I usually assess my past year twice a year: at my birthday in late October and then again at New Years. I think I just had a mini reflection in October because I allowed myself to be so busy. So anyway, I am somewhat disappointed with how my year has been. I am looking back maybe a little further than a year, maybe to Sept/Oct 2004.
One could look back to the genesis of this blog and I see where I was and where I am now....I started this blog as a way to deal with my pain of the past. I was going to counseling, journaling a lot and reading some really good books. God was showing me a new view of Freedom and then I think somewhere along the way I put the on E-Brake. I think I was freaking out about where God might be taking me and scared about the pain I might experience....So I filled up my time; I got myself busy at work and outside of work....I filled my time with reading blogs, compiling a lot of different blogs in my Bloglines account and commenting on a lot of blogs. I was busy with work and I was busy with volunteer work at church and my daughter's soccer team. Even when I have had time and not been busy with meetings at lunch I have not made use of my lunch hour to read, pray, and journal as I used to so consistently. Instead I find that I so often fritter away my lunch time on email, surfing the web, etc.
I don't want to come to this same point in the year next year and have regrets about a lot of the year. Only by consciously planning small daily steps can we change ourselves & move towards the outcome we want. Daily discipline is one of the big keys as I am thinking about all this. It is much easier to be swept up in the momentum of daily busyness and the pressures of life than to slow down and deliberately examine your life and spend time with Jesus. As this year is coming to an end I want to be more deliberate in how I spend my time, and I want to have more contemplative time in prayer and reading the Bible. I think also, I have let the noise of life crowd out the peace of Jesus....It is so easy to fill up on noise, everything shouts so loud and the quiet voice of Jesus takes some slowing, some quiet space, to hear and follow. I let the fear of my past pain shut me down, paralyzing me into a frenzied busyness that numbed me like a drug. What I have really need is the soothing, healing touch of Jesus.
I really love the book of Jeremiah, there are so many verses in this book that are meaningful to me. Some are well known and often quoted, such as Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." I read the whole book of Jeremiah over a weekend camping by myself back in May of 1989 when I was going through a very painful time. Perhaps that is why I keep coming back to Jeremiah. In it also, God again and again gives Israel a second chance. There are some verses in this book that I love: Jeremiah 31:25 "I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint." Jeremiah 2:13, not as encouraging, but what we all do again and again:
"My people have committed two sins; They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
How many cisterns, things, distractions, sins, have I, all of us, dug-tried to fashion-- that don't hold water, we turn from His Living water and try to replace it with stagnating, rotten, putrid water.
A more recent discovery is Jeremiah 33:6-8 "Nevertheless, I will bring health and healing to it; I will heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security. I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity and will rebuild them as they were before. I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their rebellion against me." This gives me hope. One last gem, Jeremiah 33:3 "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." Jeremiah Trivia: It is the longest book of the Bible, not in chapters, but in total words. There are a bunch of other great passages in Jeremiah, which I will let you discover....I am already feeling encouraged from being reminded of passages that I have known and treasure. God's Word brings Freedom and Healing, I just need to make time and slow down to take it in, and I need to stop Hiding.
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