When is the last time I turned off the Netflix, turned off the smartphone and just sat for awhile? Sat and searched for more than just a surface skim of the book I was holding. The book that has been held by so many people for thousands and thousands of years.
People hide the book I’m holding for fear of their life. People have spit upon it, calling it false in its teaching. People have danced on it. Swore to tell the truth on it. Some people have read it cover to cover, word for word, and have left changed.
That’s what I want for 2016.
I don’t want to hide it under my pillow and only pull it out when my life is falling apart. I want to read it all again. Look at the thin pages and the words that are in red and black like I’m seeing them for the first time. I want to fall in love with the main character all over again.
I have never read it cover to cover and it’s time I start. It’s time I start wresting with the pages and the truths. To find out what it truly means to be creation falling in love with its creator. I want to be known and I have to believe that starts with knowing. Knowing what is said about me on those pages and what is said about God. I want to know his character, his attributes, his songs. I want to know him to the best of my ability, even if sometimes I sing those songs off key. Even if sometimes I do the complete opposite of what he is asking me to do in the commands. Not intentionally, but mistakenly. Mistakes are only allowed if we try to fix them in the future.
I want to breathe in the words of years past and live by the examples set before me. I might not have an opportunity to still the sun in the sky but I want to learn how to pray in a way that would permit me to ask for that miracle if I needed it.
I’m in love with my own safety and security like I am with my pillows and blankets at the end of a hard day. I’m in love with my own interpretation on things, on ideas, on the future. This needs to change.
This needs to change now.
I’ve been depending on my own strengths, my own good works, and my own feelings for quite some time.
The other night with hot water dripping down my back and soap residue at my toes, with my shampoo bottle as a witness, I gave it all up again. I put down my weapons and raised my white flag.
Though I fall, you can make me new
From this death I will rise with you
Oh, the grace reaching out for me
How can it be, how can it be?
You plead my cause, you right my wrongs
You break my chains, you overcome
You gave your life to give me mine
You say that I am free
How can it be, how can it be?
I want to know this God I have claimed to surrender my life to. To really know him with all my heart, all my strength and all my soul. And maybe, maybe find out a little bit more on how it can be.
