I spent almost a year on a pretty strict regimen to rebuild my immune system. I devoted a significant amount of money, time, and attention to do so. I could feel my body healing itself. Unfortunately, our culture breads the desire for instant results, and I grew weary and maybe a little distracted with life, travel, and surgery prep. It had been a month of not doing what I was doing, and if I’m honest, probably a month of a slow fade before that. The old saying that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone still holds true.
So, here’s me back at the beginnings of discipline and routine. I can’t help but make the jump to analogy and compare this to our time with God. In the weariness of life, it can be easy to miss what our devotion to God is doing in us, but one week away…two…a month…and we are lost, fallen, depressed, and the list could go on and on. We think we don’t have time for it, but “who can afford for their soul to lose its very way? (Ann Voskamp)” What the Scriptures and prayer do in us is irreplaceable. When we give God the space to examine us, to rewrite truth on our hearts, and to renew our mind with it…we transform. We turn from the world back to Jesus.
I had a meltdown last week. Life can get heavy sometimes. The enemy knows the recipe for “too much” and what buttons to push in each of us. Mine were going off like twinkling lights on a Christmas tree. A perfect storm hit and left me a mess in the aftermath. It’s amazing what one good morning with the Lord can do with a storm-weary mess. He takes what looks like a ruin and shows a new perspective. He reveals the new creation He’s making with the wreckage. He can take a horrible, no good, very bad day and turn it into Resurrection Sunday. Friday IS good because Sunday is coming…always coming.
He is risen. It is finished. That means I have everything I need in this moment. His mercies are new every morning, and this moment is my new normal. He is enough in this moment. He is risen in this moment. It is finished in this moment. Life is a journey within and toward that completed work in this moment; ebbing and flowing. That means I’m arrived but always pursuing. It is a great paradox, and I have to go to the Savior and turn myself to it every day…toward Him every day. When I do, the sky clears and new life springs up from what looked like defeat. Resurrection happens.