(It's ok...you can laugh. God did too when He heard those titles.)
For some strange reason I was thinking about the day I would stand before God face to face. I wondered what sort of mistakes would be pointed out to me and whether I would see my sad, crinkled up life lined up against God's "Perfect Plan A."
I thought to myself..."Lord, what is the stuff You'll be mad at me for?"
Quicker than a wink I heard a response in my heart.
He said, "Not the stuff you think it will be."
His answer sort of stopped me in my tracks. (Not literally...I mean I was driving, and mind you I love Jesus but I want to see Him when it's TIME to see Him and not as the result of a 5 car pile-up.)
And for those of you who couldn't read past the thought, "God is mad at me," please understand...I don't really think He's mad at me. It was just the most relevant word I could think of at the moment. Truly, the Lord knows my heart and understands where I am coming from...what He was really saying is that I'm paying attention to things that don't have any eternal significance, and ignoring the things that do.
In other words, how much stuff have I worried about that means absolutely nothing in the Kingdom of God? How much time have I wasted on behavior modification when I should have been submitting myself to a heart transplant?
To be honest, I don't want to know. I think the answer would make me sit down and cry for a long, long time.
Slowly but surely, God is pulling this little girl's fingers out of her ears, and opening her eyes to see that life is not nearly as sad and bitter as the lies she has swallowed. There are still great times to be had, full of joy and sweetness and new beginnings.
I won't lie to you and say that this new awakening comes easily or without cost. Sometimes it's bloody and hard and a type of death has to occur so that hope can live and breathe freely.
The bible calls this process "renewing my mind," among other things.
All these fruitless concerns are too heavy for me to carry anymore. I think I'll shrug them off and shift my focus to things that matter to God. Like, loving Him with all my heart, my soul and my might, and loving my neighbor as I love myself.
I think those two ideas are enough to keep me occupied for the rest of my life.
(I realize a lot of this post has some abstract concepts and there's a lot of use of ambiguous words like "things" and "stuff" but that's the best I can describe it without making you want to stab your eyeballs with a spork at the detailed inanity of my existence.)
(You can thank me for sparing you and your eyeballs later.)
Dear One,
ReplyDeleteYou posted right after me today at Ann's so I dropped by, being so close and all. I think you may appreciate my blog post of yesterday, but even more so, the comments of the blog post. It all had to do with God reviewing our lives at the end of our lives. There are a lot of great thoughts there. My readers are smart.
Hugs as you begin to grandmother,
Dawn (grandmother to 5)
Dawn,
DeleteThank you for the sweet invitation. And thank you for stopping by!
Mercy, lady, you are one talented writer! That bit about wanting to meet Jesus, but when it's "TIME"? Brilliant! This post made me stop for a minute and just wonder. Thank you. For the heaping helping of conviction with the side of laughter.
ReplyDeleteI'll be at BlogHer this summer - if you hit that up, you come find me and let's grab a cup of tea or coffee and chat! Deal?
Hey Missindeedy...I won't be at BlogHer...I don't really know much about it other than it's some type of conference where bloggers congregate and eat and stuff.
DeleteBut thanks as usual for making my head blow up 10 sizes with your kind words. :)