It is my favorite time of the week when I get to sneak in there and no one else is around yet. Sometimes I am the only one in the whole big church for a short while. I will put a few kitchen lights on for those who arrive after me to cook the family dinners or practice singing, but I feel pulled by the heartstrings to the steeple first –right to my Father’s side in this long-loved building.
In a cocoon of quiet in here, just like when I talk to Him under the stars, I am encircled by a gentle presence here too, a happy place where we both can sit and chat, catch up, exchange thoughts. He shuts out all the distractions, even the traffic outside is silenced when I am there near Him. I can feel the peace of Him through the place and even through me, all the cells that makes me up seem to be content. I have no aches or worries. If just for a little while, everything about me and life around me seem to be caught up into some stratosphere of Hope, Joy and Love when I’m here with our Father. It’s always been like that since I was a kid. ( pssst…there’s a link to Stained Glass Windows there! 🙂
This gives me a sad thought, though. Knowing that so many in this world choose not to enjoy the Father’s Presence, many even hate Him or don’t even try to know Him at all, they lose out on the greatest joy in this life and the after-life. With so much chaos, hate and violence, plus the unheveled natural events, we seek to fix everything that we already destroyed.
That’s a big miss, a supernatural connection with a very personal – YES, I SAID PERSONAL, loving God who loves to be sought after.
Think of this famous question: If you can spend one hour with the greatest person you’ve ever known, who would that be? Now, with that answer that is giving you a big smiling thinking about it, take that good feeling you get when near them (or had been with them). You feel their soul within yours and it comforts you.
Now magnify that by at least 100x with the Father – a bath of honest love. Don’t you know He loves you that much more? Who gave you that ability to love?
He waits for you too. Maybe you can’t get to a steeple in safety or seek the Maker of the stars at night. That’s okay. Seeking Him right where you are is just fine with Him. Call on Jesus, seek him honestly in confession for a reconciliation with the One, a Homecoming, a new life with a clean slate, a confidence to talk to the Father, the King of Kings. Yes, He waits for you.
I know the sun is in the sky during the day, and the moon at night. Even if I don’t see them, they are there and effecting my life and well-being. So, He too is here all the time. I don’t have to look up to see Him at all, I just know it like I know my own name that Emmanuel is with us.
Jesus has a lot to say to us. It’s relevant to our times, it’s needed, and it’s all in love. But it’s up to us to listen. If we don’t – expect more of what’s going wrong in the world and magnified. So far, NO ONE has been able to fix it all, and yet no one asks the One who can.
For 2016, and as long as I’m around – you’ll be hearing a lot from Soothing Prose this year!
Soothing Prose - a picturesque spiritual journal 