Lingering in beauty

Being a Type-A personality (that is, continually striving for perfection and efficiency), it can be hard for me to do anything slowly without becoming frustrated. Naturally, I don't sit back and enjoy the beauty and peace of a simple moment - I identify a task, complete the task as quickly and as well as I can, enjoy the sense of fulfillment at its completion, and then move on to the next task.

But those simple moments can hide some incredible beauty, and I think it is worthwhile for me to make the effort to slow down and linger in them while they last.

For example, on Friday afternoon I bought a bag of black beans in bulk, and needed to transfer them from the little plastic bag to a glass jar for pantry storage purposes. Now, these little plastic bags they use in the bulk sections of stores are really quite flimsy, and when I've tried to pour beans directly from the bag into a jar in the past beans have gone flying everywhere. Nevertheless, because it feels so much faster, I typically do it that way anyway, and just try to be especially careful. On Friday, however, for some reason, I decided to scoop the beans out and into the jar with my hands. It felt slower, because I could only pick up a certain amount at a time (not a full double handful, lest I risk dropping them) and then had to funnel them delicately into the jar (not too quickly, lest they bounce off the mouth of the jar). But as I let the beans fall from my cupped hands into the jar, I felt the smoothness of their skins and the firm curvature of their shape as they jostled against each other and against my hands. I saw the dull gleam of their black matte exteriors, and the ever-changing shadows between them. I heard the gentle rhythmic rain as they fell onto the glass and then onto each other. And for a moment, my shoulders relaxed and my mind quieted, and the simple beauty of the action filled the room with peace.

So, my goal for this week: to take more time to notice these moments of beauty that God has placed in even the most seemingly trivial aspects of our lives, and not just to notice them but to linger in them, to let their peace seep into my heart. It is true that these moments are purely of this life, completely temporal - but God created this world, and temporality, and He can use it to teach us about eternity and craft us in His image.

An armor of peace around my heart

Either I am rapidly turning into a worrier or I have always been one and am now just starting to realize it! Whichever alternative it is, it is rather annoying...

I feel that, in some sense, worry is antithetical to trust and faith, and one of the central facets of being a Christian is having trust and faith in God. For instance, if I am trusting God with my feelings of self-worth and identity, then I shouldn't be worrying about what the people around me think about what I'm wearing, or what the other church-goers will think about me having to raise my hand to ask for a Bible when I forget mine. Those things truly will not affect who I believe myself to be if I am defining myself in faith based on what God has declared to be true about me! So the worry and the trust aren't exactly able to coexist, at least not without a struggle.

On the positive side, if we are willing to take a step towards faith and away from worry, God lets us know how and accompanies it with a pretty awesome promise:

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." - Phil. 4:6-7 

That's probably a familiar verse to most of you, and it is to me as well, but let's not allow its familiarity to diminish its power and impact in our lives! I see here a wonderful promise: that if we take action against against our worry by taking our requests and anxieties to God with prayer and thanksgiving, we can be assured that our hearts and our minds will be defended and protected by God's own peace, in Jesus. And from what will they be defended, one might ask? Primarily they will be guarded from anxiety itself, I believe - but I also think that God's peace will work to defend us against many of the emotions and sins that accompany worry: fear of rejection, for example, or the need for the approval of others, or an inability to speak the truth boldly. These are different for each person, but the common thread is that they, entering our hearts on worry's coattails, attack our faith in God and consequently threaten our actions of obedience to God.

So let us go forth into the stress and anxiety that the holiday season can engender (or let's face it, if you're anything like me, that any season of life can engender) full of prayer and thanksgiving, that we may build in Christ an armor of peace around our hearts and our minds!

The dirt itself rejoices

It can be so easy to be discontented with where I am in life, even when rationally I am convinced that I am where God wants me to be. I look back to the past, and miss things I used to do that, for whatever reason, are no longer a part of my life (like short-term mission trips, or going to my old church), or I miss dreams that I once had that I now know can no longer ever be (at least not in the way I had envisioned them, once upon a time). I look forward to the future, and I see all the hopes and plans and desires I have, and can become impatient in my desiring, unable to wait for them to come to fruition in God's timing. Or I can look at the present, and choose to see only the things that aren't quite right, that make me uncomfortable or anxious or stressed.

You know what the problem is, with this way of looking at the world?

It never leaves you a time to be happy.

The way to be happy - the way to find joy - is to praise God in the present, to seek Him now, to choose to see the beauty in the place and time in which He has set you, to thank Him for His goodness and faithfulness and sovereignty in working out everything - here and now - just the way He has. When you look at the world through eyes of trust and gratitude, you can be content anywhere; when you look at the world through eyes of discontentment, striving to make yourself and your circumstances worthwhile by your own strength, you will never be content though you have everything you thought your heart desired.

When the rain finally falls after a long drought, the dirt itself in its dryness rejoices. Do I rejoice when the rain of His refreshing falls on my thirsty soul, or do I complain that it is not enough?

"Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips." - Psalm 63:3-5, emphasis added

His love is enough reason to be satisfied, regardless of what else is happening in my life.