This Moment

"Daily work is not drudgery or pressure-packed, but cadence and beauty. This work is our slow dance with God."    - Ann Voskamp

Do we realize that THIS life, THIS day, THIS activity, is holy? Do we realize we are with God in this moment? Do we realize this moment IS God’s plan for us? We have the opportunity at every moment to spend intimate time with our Father, Creator. He has made us for this. He longs for us to turn our eyes to Him and open our arms, hearts and minds in this moment. He is waiting beside us, within us, for an invitation to participate in our every moment. No matter what we are doing. We are missing billions of opportunities to be infused by Boundless Energy, Infinite Knowledge and Perfect Love. How many seconds, how many moments, opportunities, are in a lifetime?

1 billion seconds = 31yrs 251days 13hrs 34min 53seconds
2 billion seconds = 63yrs 137days 21hrs 21min 4seconds
3 billion seconds = 95yrs 24days 5hrs 7min 11seconds

How many moments are we willing to waste? We could have already wasted a billion, even 2. And WE are wasting away as a result. Yes, even in our most difficult work, our deepest trenches, our maddeningly mundane, we can be filled to overflowing with all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:17b-18) Let’s take THIS moment, EVERY moment to share intimacy with the Father. Let’s talk to Him, listen, thank Him, and appreciate THIS moment as a gift from Him – part of His plan for our life – and give Him the opportunity to fill us with the boundless, perfect gifts that are only His to offer – the ONLY gifts that will truly satiate us and infuse us with the power to enter into the next moment stronger, better, more complete than we entered the last.

Father, thank you for the billions of opportunities I have to be intimate with You here in this life. Forgive me for the opportunities I have wasted. Remind me to invite You into the multitude moments I have yet to experience so You can fill me with Yourself. Thank You.

Invite Him to THIS Moment!
Alexis

End of Preface

Welcome to the last chapter in the story of how this blog began. Thank you for journeying with me thusfar. I pray it has been beneficial to some of you in some way. This is still just the beginning.

Monday, February 22, 2010

[Entire reference can be found at this link. Below is an excerpt.]
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2010/02/do-not-let-anything-keep-you.html

"Do not let anything keep you
from flinging out into the streets, eyes and mouth full of His wonder,…

and awe is why I grab the pen and I make the record,
and Beauty is why I scratch it down late, day after day,
and He makes the pulse race and brushes the tear clear and cups the life tender


and this is why I hurtle over the high fear
and disparaging words can't keep me and splaying shortcomings can't keep me and illness, work, obligations can't keep me,

and He is my blaze and He is my burn and and I cannot be muzzled because what can separate from the telling once the eyes have seen?


Could there be anything greater than this,
the bearing witness
to the sighting?

I give testimony.
And I cannot
not."


I have let even nothing keep me from beginning my blog. I must schedule time to do it or it won’t happen. Tonight. No excuses. Tonight.

God is working on something else in me, too. From the excerpt below, [Another subject for a future post.] I am reminded.  Is God in favor of savings accounts and investment portfolios? I know there is good in planning and preparing and taking care of our responsibilities. Yet I also know there is good in charity, generosity, meeting others' needs and living outside of our comforts. I suppose as in many things there is a balance. But where is the fulcrum? Where do responsibility and generosity intersect?


The same can be asked of my priority list. I hardly ever seem to meet the top few of my responsibilities and priorities, much less find time for ministering to others. I think I am called to do it all simultaneously. What an awesome calling for me! Awesome in the sense that everyone, including me, would truly be “full of awe” if I was ever able to do it all. Even once. I don’t doubt that God can do it through me, in me. I only doubt my willingness to let Him. Again, the common prayer request, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
  
Tuesday, February 23, 2010

I did it. I started the blog. I obeyed. It’s messy, it’s not perfect, it’s not even satisfactory to me, but I obeyed. It is begun. I don’t know the software, I can’t customize it the way I want and I don’t have time to spend on it right now. But I have obeyed and that is the important part. It is truly not a blog of my own making, and that is best. If it were, I would have spent longer on the preparation, design and content, and it still wouldn’t be started. God, use it the way You see fit. Guide my posting, my thinking, my time. I give it all to You. It is Yours. Please frustrate my efforts to make it mine. It must be Yours to be of any value. Guide me in how I share it, when and with whom. That is the next step.


As I look back at last week’s post I think perhaps my Lenten season has begun. [Another subject for a future post.] Is this blog the place where I give up myself and exist for the sake of others? I hope so. So far it is. I certainly don’t want to bring attention to myself in this way. This environment is too uncontrolled for me to be comfortable here. I don’t have the time to control it. I can’t control the image of me that I convey to others. And that is the crux. I leave up to God what he wants me to reveal to the world. I have to. This is the crux, the cross, I bear. Glory to God the Father. Not to me. Only faults and weaknesses and humanity revealed from me. Sins, scars, bruises, mistakes, ugliness. All mine. And in all of that, is revealed the true God who heals, forgives, restores, redeems, loves and makes beautiful. In revealing my utterly embarrassing depravity, God reveals His true Glory. Himself. Thank You, Jesus.

And that, my friends, is the purpose of this blog - to reveal the heart and character of the One True God by revealing how He works in my life. Without Him we are all faulty, weak, lost and ugly. With Him, we are beautiful, powerful, complete, and have a purpose. A destiny.

I pledge to you and to Him, that I will do my best to share with you only His work in my life. I will present to you His glory, character and redemptive work by sharing with you my reliance on Him. If I ever start to present even a hint of self-righteousness, pride or attempt to share in the glory that is His alone, you have my permission to let me know! He has called me to be brutally honest with myself and reveal it through this blog. My tendency is to present a lighter, prettier, more self-flattering version of the truth. I know this will be difficult for me. He has much to teach me and I have much to learn. Yet if I do not share the complete truth, I have done nothing of value for you or me. Will you help me hold myself to this standard? I'm sure God will. In this way we will work together to reveal the truth. Jesus will become clearer, revealed for all to see. May it be so.

Thank You,
Alexis

Obedience

Ok. I know I promised you the end of the beginning, but I'm short on time and I think this post is best split into two. So only one more post after this one until this story is complete.

Again, this journal entry quotes from my current favorite blog. But I cannot deny the powerful way God has spoken to me through the life and pen of this "cyber-sister."

Tuesday, February 02, 2010


Ann Voskamp marvels at the wonder of ice crystals on her windowsill – how intricate, miraculous, delicate and fleeting. Mostly unnoticed.

[A link to the entire post is provided, but I have included an excerpt below.]

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2010/02/how-to-discover-true-value-of-you-and.html




“Beauty out of nothing.
Worship out of thin air.

I push away from my desk, kneel down on knees by the sill. How can I blithely keep working when wonder is happening and right there on the windowsill? Who will give witness? Who will whisper glory, Glory?


Heavens fall white.

That God creates this finely wrought beauty and no one continuously applauds. That in the womb of winter, He weaves water into clear crystal, glass.


That every single one of these millions of snowflakes births out of vapor, vapor of ocean waves, of jungle plants, of river current. Vapor of my every breath, now falls snow, breath of God. Vapor with no genetic code to follow, that assembles out of air into rarefied design, ornaments of The Invisible Hands.


And I rarely notice and I rarely give praise and whether His work is regarded is entirely irrelevant because God is fixed on beauty, and the pure joy of the creating, and the secret delight simply in the working. I can’t get over it – every flake masterpiece and there are no accolades and what do I know of hidden work simply for His glory’s sake?


Water droplets pool on the ledge.


The pile of stacked powder on the sill – is it waning? Has the temperature shifted even just a degree? They’re melting. Exquisiteness evaporating, the stellar dendrites, carved glass arms, one at a time, right before my eyes, vanishing. Beauty vanishing into thin air. All His magnificence…. Gone. I can’t believe how I mourn in that moment.


I am vapor too, grieving my kin and in each flake fading I see the way of my going.


And yet to God, there is hallowed worth simply in the being, that the coming and the being is the important, not the accomplishing or the acknowledgments. That the masterpiece of each person is all to His glory no matter the noticing and that all work need be beauty, even if unsung vapor.


God revels in the unrecognized.


‘Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.

As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.’
 —Thomas Merton, in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966"



Today in my Bible study, Psalm 119:49-56 describes a confidence and comfort in obedience despite the opinions or reactions of others. Oh, to be confident and satisfied with “the value, the rightness, the truth of” pure obedience! What a gift from God! That we would know the truth, He would give it to us, and we would find complete freedom in obedience!

Oh, to be completely satisfied by my Audience of One! Will I ever truly cease performing for others? One day I will. That one day.  Until then, I will continue striving to please the only One who truly matters, and be completely satisfied with His thoughts of me. Pure obedience is completely independent of earthly results - accolades or criticisms. Lord, help me obey with a pure heart.

In Obedience,
Alexis

The Truth

(Apologies for the spacing and formatting errors. I'm still new to Blogger. The more I try to fix it, the worse it gets. And who has time to waste with buggy editors?)

Tonight I will continue the story of how this blog began. (The story began here.) I have been tempted to stray in a different direction. I have begun to tire of this long diatribe and I have struggled to make a cohesive story out of months of journal entries. I wonder if it will all make sense to any of you, or if you can even endure reading it all. Yet in reviewing my journal entries, I am reminded of God’s purposes. I learn and remember so much from this process. Most importantly, I am reminded it is for God’s purposes that I am doing this. It won’t always make sense to me, but I know my calling here. He has made it clear. My job is simply to obey. So I continue the story of this blog.

If you have time, the link in my journal entry below is well worth reading. If not, I pulled out a few excerpts that spoke to my journey at the time. The entire post is about much more than this.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2009/03/fear-of-silence.html

…why scratch down bits of my life, plastering them up on the walls of cyberspace, creating even more visual racket?...

it is long silent beats, the God encounters, that gives us something of worth to say in the normative community circles…

The words we speak must find their genesis from the silent places.

I am still struggling with the call to begin a blog. The more I write, the more I realize how little I have to say. Some days I have nothing at all significant to others. Other days I wax eloquent through thoughts and revelations, and still doubt their worth or validity to others. I hear what I believe the Lord is speaking to me, through me. Yet I am no theologian. I have no tomes of commentaries and ancient texts and translations. I have but little knowledge, cyberspace resources and limited time. I have no doubt that God is speaking to me and transforming me into His likeness. But in my constant state of metamorphosis I know not if my revelations and reasonings reflect ultimate truth –the truth that will someday be fully known to me.

Yet isn’t the Truth Jesus? If I am revealing Him to others, is He the only Word that matters? Still, I hesitate to share any shred of errant self-made doctrine. Yet isn’t it our self-doubt, our humility, our weakness that God is able to most fully shine through? Doesn’t He desire most to work though our weakness so that there can be no doubt that He is the one doing the work? So we have no doubt that He is speaking in our stead? True, that.

So it will only be with holy fear and great trepidation that I humbly and prayerfully take up my pen and scribe my journey for all of the world to see. I must commit to only reveal the Truth as it is revealed to me, and simultaneously claim no credentials but Christ. A sinner saved by grace being transformed by the Spirit, stumbling and balking all along the way. I can claim no authority or comprehensive knowledge. I can only share my story, my testimony, in humility…the manner in which Christ is working in my life to transform me into the self of my destiny. The way He works. That is what I can share. The Truth of His Word. Glimpses of His Glory. How to keep striving towards Him. How to allow Him to work in me. A thoughtful life. A redeemed life. A reformed sinner’s life. A blessed life.

Still, it is a high calling. But a true calling. A calling I think I can answer--He can answer.