A Take-Back and A Step Forward

Alrite, ya know last Tuesday when I said that thing about rain being beautiful... well, maybe what I meant to say is rain every now and again is beautiful - I'm thinkin like, once every third week or so. Maybe a bit more frequently if it comes at night in the form of a thunderstorm - then mama nature and I might have a bargain.

This rain, this every-day-rain-on-my-parade kinda rain, is no longer seeming beautiful to me... it's feeling like a burden! (The kinda burden that makes me want to sit in bed all day and eat peanut butter... what, did I say that out loud?)

I really haven't been sitting in bed all day though. I've been busy. Probably too busy... and the past couple days I'm feeling it. I'm feeling like I want to take a little bit more time away from people, a little bit more time to read and think and relax... alone. I feel rushed by everyone's schedules and coerced to fit as many people as possible into the nooks and crannies of my day out of fear that I will miss them when I'm gone.

If I have a free moment and it's not possible to hang out with people, I'll call them. And I don't even LIKE to talk on the phone. I guess you could say I just have anxiety about leaving... all of the human fears that come with heading away from home for an extended period of time.

And so... I'm trying to hold people close but in doing so, I've pushed God (and my own desires) clear out of my schedule. I submit and agree to doing things I'd rather not and then feel stressed when my schedule's booked because I know all too well that the time leading up to a big trip offers no grace; there is no way to elongate a week or stretch out a day... they just fly by, completely objective to my concerns.

It is a step forward for me, however, that I desire alone time with the Lord. All semester desire has been more than half my battle. A lack of desire mixed with a heap of unbelief doesn't really allow for any major break-throughs with the Lord, that's for sure.

I'm back to listening to Art Katz - the best of the best - and feeding off of his incredibly God-inspired words. The following is from an article of his that I read last night:

"How many of us have congratulated ourselves for a relationship with God that is more fanciful than it is real? Wholly indifferent and likely ignorant of His Word, we have sanctified in our minds, or sentimentally revered, gods of our own making. "You thought that I was just like you (Ps.50:21b)" is the rebuke of the living God, who sees every heart; for indeed, the failure to know God as He is, is inexorably linked with another sin equally as grievous, and like unto it, the failure to see ourselves as we are. Ironically, modern mankind, or that portion that is ever disposed to direct their thoughts Godward, have more likely been guilty of making God into their own image than He has had opportunity to make them into His own. Smug, righteous, self-satisfac­tion has ever characterized those who delight in religion but are ignorant of Him whom their practices ostensibly celebrate."

Ahh, does that hit you the way it hits me?? Somebody... please... agree!