Today’s sermon was on love, specifically how does God want you to love Him? I seem to hear alot about love lately. Which is good. I can’t seem to shake some sense of sadness in the midst of all this talk of love, however.
I am not sure why that is. Is it residue from thinking so intensely of how quickly we toss off people when they are of no more use to us? Of how the medical establishment truly has horrendous ethical issues to deal with, in an impossible economic climate? Is it leftovers from the messed up family issues amongst my own mother, sisters, …and the remaining hurt from my father? Is that it?
I have somewhat distanced myself emotionally. In fact, so much so that I am intellectually worried about myself. I am calmer this way, but I don’t feel as much. I don’t know if that is good. Sometimes it seems better. I have tended to be so deeply intertwined in feeling others pain that it used to almost paralyze me. And that just never seemed a useful thing, although people always appreciated my listening ear. They just didn’t like the advice that I was so prone to give.
Sometimes people just don’t want solutions or to think about solutions.
I never understood that. But I accept it now. They want for your understanding and sympathetic presence… they want comfort.
Sometimes I think it is due to the different makeup of people. The types of thinking and ways of attuning to the world are categorically different in types of people.
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Today was a beautiful day. It made me thankful – I had a bit of emotional rest from that. My family here is more at peace with one another, and that has given me rest and gratefulness. It has been God’s work, because He knows how badly I mess these things up.
I am torn though. I am torn between wanting to rest in a quiet life of contentment being busy about my garden, children, and personal goals, but then I am burdened with what is going on in my world. I think what I most miss is someone to pray with. And I am chagrined with my own spiritual stunting.
I want to grow, but life keeps driving me on. Instead of me directing it, or deliberately choosing my direction ( I think that’s what I mean). So here is my vesper prayer and thoughts… the day is waning and it has been a good day, but has it been the day that it ought to have been? Or have I been playing at life, in a sort of dress rehearsal- only to understand that the real has marched on and played out and the curtain is ready to fall?
Like some terrible dream. I don’t believe life is meant to be a terrible dream of misplaced goals and misspent opportunities. I believe we have potential for something much more vital – that I have the potential … even at this late date.
Perhaps it is just a temporary loss of taste, ability to discern. Like the manna in the desert- which gave such nourishment, but was of such a light taste that it seemed as nothing.
Perhaps it is just time for deeper commitment to faith. To understanding that love is there and simply needs to be discerned. To sharpen the senses by quieting the soul.
Help me, God, to throw off the distractions, the unnecessary, the clamoring. to throw it off with no regrets and no looking back. To savor freedom, to savor Your Presence, to savor the wonderful times with people and the soul satisfaction of accomplishing that which my convictions tell me are in your plan for me.