Day Six: Tension
My life is filled with tensions. Oh, how I love the solitude and the silence of The Acres! The stillness and serenity even as I labor enriches my soul. Oh, how I love interacting on a daily basis with a room filled with teenagers! Not exactly a place of solitude, silence, stillness, and serenity. But yes, they never fail to enrich my soul.
The Future. Each year I plant new things at The Acres. Each year I see more things I would love to do to make The Acres even more beautiful. Yet, i know it is just a fantasy to think that I can make this place a new Paradise--a new Eden. The weeds and the destructive creatures and the cold snaps are not ever going away. But hope and vision--two of the joyous wonders of the life God gives us--radiate from thoughts of the future. Every time I plant a new flower I think, "I must stay here at least one more year to see if it blooms." Every time I imagine a project, I think, "next summer I'll start on it. Lord, don't take me Home in the winter."
Home. Oh, how I long for Home--to see His face. And yet, time and again those I love here on earth have situations where I can help, where I can invest myself--inadequately--but lovingly to meet real needs. My son! Friends. Past students at times. If I were Home, "far better for me," as Paul declares, I could not be used by Him to touch the lives of those I have been commissioned to love in His place. I love, too, to see their faces.
.The gift of receiving I do not have. Oh, I love to give to others--"my" resources when I can, my time, the words of encouragement and exhortation the Spirit has given me, pictures of the beauty found in The Acres He has so graciously given me. Great joy comes from giving. Yet, in my pride I struggle with the gift of receiving--with embracing the giving that others do for me in His name. He has been patiently working on me these years to make me truly generous--generously embracing the joy He gives to those who give to me. I may one day be humble enough to have the gift of receiving in all its joyous splendor.
Tensions: Solitude. Ministry. Eden. The Curse. Home. Here. Giving. Receiving. Each year I more deeply understand Paul's truth that contentment is learned--a life-long process. Ah, such a slow learner. Daily my Savior in patient love uses my circumstances--the tensions in my life--to teach me to be content. I must learn to trust Him so that I can develop the strength to each new day rest totally dependent on Him so that I can do all the things He calls me to do until He takes me Home.
My life is filled with tensions. Oh, how I love the solitude and the silence of The Acres! The stillness and serenity even as I labor enriches my soul. Oh, how I love interacting on a daily basis with a room filled with teenagers! Not exactly a place of solitude, silence, stillness, and serenity. But yes, they never fail to enrich my soul.
The Future. Each year I plant new things at The Acres. Each year I see more things I would love to do to make The Acres even more beautiful. Yet, i know it is just a fantasy to think that I can make this place a new Paradise--a new Eden. The weeds and the destructive creatures and the cold snaps are not ever going away. But hope and vision--two of the joyous wonders of the life God gives us--radiate from thoughts of the future. Every time I plant a new flower I think, "I must stay here at least one more year to see if it blooms." Every time I imagine a project, I think, "next summer I'll start on it. Lord, don't take me Home in the winter."
Home. Oh, how I long for Home--to see His face. And yet, time and again those I love here on earth have situations where I can help, where I can invest myself--inadequately--but lovingly to meet real needs. My son! Friends. Past students at times. If I were Home, "far better for me," as Paul declares, I could not be used by Him to touch the lives of those I have been commissioned to love in His place. I love, too, to see their faces.
.The gift of receiving I do not have. Oh, I love to give to others--"my" resources when I can, my time, the words of encouragement and exhortation the Spirit has given me, pictures of the beauty found in The Acres He has so graciously given me. Great joy comes from giving. Yet, in my pride I struggle with the gift of receiving--with embracing the giving that others do for me in His name. He has been patiently working on me these years to make me truly generous--generously embracing the joy He gives to those who give to me. I may one day be humble enough to have the gift of receiving in all its joyous splendor.
Tensions: Solitude. Ministry. Eden. The Curse. Home. Here. Giving. Receiving. Each year I more deeply understand Paul's truth that contentment is learned--a life-long process. Ah, such a slow learner. Daily my Savior in patient love uses my circumstances--the tensions in my life--to teach me to be content. I must learn to trust Him so that I can develop the strength to each new day rest totally dependent on Him so that I can do all the things He calls me to do until He takes me Home.
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