Wait

If you've been listening to the news over the past several days, you're fully aware of every detail of the lives of Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barak Obama and Joe Biden and you can picture the predicted progress of three tropical storms-turned hurricanes off the east coast of the U.S.

In the midst of the soap opera that has become the Presidential election process, the images of New Orleans, yet again battered and bruised by Mother Nature, paying my bills, planning meals, doing laundry and deciding whether or not I really should be cleaning, I find I must constantly remind myself who is really in charge of it all.

My "God time" is all too often the first thing to be eliminated or at a minimum short-changed. It is in the midst of the big and loud and incessant intrusions by the world that I know I need to turn to the one who created a world in perfect harmony and balance. I use the word need here very literally. I need God. I need Him every day, and often every hour of every day.

Without God as my center and my focus I lose my perspective and get tangled up in the world of man. If I don't go out to my deck in the morning and look up at the stars in the sky, the things of this world can grow to seem very big. If I don't take the time to just quiet myself and breathe in the peace and comfort that is possible only through my belief in Jesus Christ, my whole day is off kilter.

It's Saturday morning and I woke up at 5:00! (I could technically have slept until noon if I had wanted to, but I set the alarm for 7 so I could get an early start on the 'very important' things I had planned for this day.) I think God may have been missing me as much as I have missed Him. His prompting to get up early has actually helped me order the day ahead correctly.

I can recall a time I would awaken at 2 or 3 in the morning, unable to go back to sleep. I would slip downstairs, open my bible and spend time in the Word. My "born again" faith was very new and exciting then. I fed off the nourishment of discovering a God of power and might, mercy and grace. I hungered for the Spirit to visit me and enfold me and engulf me in the electric quality of supernatural peace. My creative juices flowed and I saw God's cloud ever before me.

I wonder sometimes what changed that I don't do that now. Of course I'm quite a number of years older now. My life has changed dramatically over the last decade in so many ways as well. But I need God just as much now as I did then. Perhaps my need is even greater now. I think God wants me to take the iniative now. My faith is more mature now and yet I push God away all to often.

Maturity is not the correct word. I think of my relationship as one might view marriage. The love is still there, and the passion and the desire for companionship but over time we begin to take the other for granted. We don't make the same effort we once did, we don't work at the relationship and so we can grow apart and drift away from each other. Of course God is constant; I am the one who drifts!

My creative juices are beginning to flow again and I am trying very hard to be intentional about my faith. I have reinstituted breath prayers throughout the day. I have shifted from thinking or saying, "OH MY God," out of exasperation and fatigue to saying, "Oh my wonderful, marvelous God." Words are powerful. This small change in my behavior has allowed me to be sustained by God's love and power this week.

I guess I'm rambling at this point. Hey, it 6:30 on a Saturday morning. I've only just finished my first cup of coffee!

Psalm 27:14

Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yea, wait for the LORD!