Good morning…
For followers of Jesus Christ, Sunday mornings help us to deepen down into our truest desires. This morning as I revisit words from the first chapter of our semester’s book, Sacred Rhythms, I come across the crux of our matter.
“Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you,” notices author Ruth Haley Barton. “You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. There is a place within each one of us that is spiritual in nature, the place where God’s Spirit witnesses with our spirit about our truest identity. Here God’s Spirit dwells with our spirit, and here our truest desires make themselves known. From this place we cry out to God for deeper union with him and with others.”
Our spiritual mentor Betty Skinner used to say to me regularly, “Pray for God to increase your desire for Him alone.”
This Sabbath morning her enduring wisdom sinks down a bit deeper within me.
My God, my soul is so traumatized; the only help is remembering You wherever I may be… In the roar of Your waterfalls, ancient depths surge, calling out to the deep. All Your waves break over me; am I drowning?
Yet in the light of day, the Eternal shows me His love. When night settles in and all is dark, He keeps me company—His soothing song, a prayerful melody to the True God of my life (Psalm 42:6-8, VOICE).
…Sue…
