Flood Gates

I have a confession to make. For the past several months, I have been adrift. I thought I was peacefully drifting, savoring the quiet of life, enjoying my family. Over the course of the past few weeks, I have come to realize that while I did need some quiet, I have squandered it. Instead of resting in my Heavenly Father, I stalled out. My mind came to a grinding halt, my heart closed down for the season, and my soul became malnourished. I sought my own way instead of Christ's.

We often buy into the world's message that we deserve "me" time. Our culture sells us music, hobbies, books, pursuits, travel, movies, and other such items of interest with which we fill our time. The world sells us pleasure. What we forget is that their primary priority is not our greater good, it is money. While the things listed above are not necessarily bad in and of themselves, the priority we give them in our life, the strength with which we pursue them alters their value. Pleasure is not bad, but pleasure outside of God is empty, draining, and unsatisfying. In God and in abiding in Him, we gain eternal pleasure.

Psalm 16:11 says...
"You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand."

The past few months have been nice, I suppose. I've had time to read, watch television, play with my children, pursue some of my hobbies, go out with friends, and visit family. All of this sounds great, right? So, why was I feeling empty? Why was I longing for more? Why was I beginning to feel riddled with fear, anxiety, and restlessness? I didn't have an answer until recently. And then it hit me with sudden clarity. God was absent. My dear Savior, the Overseer of my soul, had not been invited. I was lonely for my Father.

The shame of this, or realizing this, almost paralyzed me. But even this is a tool of the Enemy. If he can get me to give in to the guilt, I am blinded to Christ's work on the cross and the forgiveness that is mine as His child. God's grace is sufficient for me.

So, today I am trying to recover from my idleness and seek Him. It isn't easy. Habits have a way of working into your life and grabbing a hold of you with a tenacious strength. God's grace is sufficient.

Recently I read an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, Book III, chapter 10.

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."

Today I will remember that the things I have enjoyed, though marginally, over the past few months were gifts from God but were never intended to be enjoyed without Him.

Today I choose to come to Him and rest.

Today I choose to learn from Him and find rest for my soul.

Today I will rejoice that in taking on His yoke, my burdens fall away.

Thank you, Father.