"So take all of me..."

I think trying to be cool is so very tiring.

I gave up on it quite some time ago, but I’d be a liar to say the feeling doesn’t creep up on me time and again.
I don’t know, lately there is this zeal roaring in my spirit about the passions and energies of our lives.
WHAT THE HECK ARE WE GIVING OURSELVES TO?

I read this twitter update that said the following,
“The older I get, the clearer I see vanity and meaningless activity profiting little to nothing at all - and I despise it all the more.”

This is something I often feel. I can partially thank my mother who was given the grace to see the true worth of activities (and people) and mostly to the journey the Lord started me on when I was a freshman in high school.

The second update went further:
“Salvation is more than being saved from hell and the lake of fire; it is deliverance from vanity & meaningless toil into choices that matter.”

I think that is so true.

There are so much more verses that confirm these thoughts,
Psalm 27:4, Phil. 3:7-14, Mark 8:31-38, etc.

I work a full time job, from the moment I leave to the moment I come home takes about 9 ½ hours of my day. I sleep more than usual as I’m a sleepy pregnant woman, which leaves me about 4 or 5 hours a night to do what I need to do for the kingdom. That also leaves little time for anything else.

Now, listen, I’ve become quite a loser in this arena. Great fatigue (of body and soul) have crippled these precious hours, and I often get embarrassed when Ricky pulls up around 9PM and asks me what I’d done. I need grace from the Lord right now. Grace that means power from the Holy Spirit to live well and live full.

To come back to my main point – all this toiling for great style and cool clothes and cute décor and awesome blogs and trendy dinners and vintage crafts and great pictures of this and that can be such vanities! We are all sucked into one thing or another – with Ricky it’s all the gadgets on his iphone, or sports scores, or the newyorktimes. For me it’s an even greater myriad of things.

And it’s been the tug at my soul since I can remember: to give my time and energies to this or to that?

As my dear like-hearted friend Courtney said, “it's worth it to give yourself fully to God on this side of time (God hedge us in to find no satisfaction apart from You)... no soul will face Him on the day they give account and wish they gave less, but rather they would probably think the opposite... the quote "too heavenly minded for earthly good" i believe is birthed from a heart clinging to other gods... it’s worth it to die now, to have true life. God help us!”

I couldn’t agree more.

I believe we live in such an hour of shiny little attractions begging for our souls, even for our lives. I remember beautiful Britney saying, “Our lives are made up of little moments...” Those little moments are all we have, and do we serve within those pockets the Lord and His purposes or our own fantasies? What are we building with our hours and with our minutes?

John Piper recently released a letter stating his intent to take an 8 month sabbatical.  Even the burdens of ministry can crowd the soul. I think it is a beautiful time to re-evaluate our lives.

I write this mostly in the hour of my greatest failure concerning time spent. And I write it to encourage anyone not living in the most ideal circumstances. I went from a prayer room 4 minutes from my house, a community of eternity-driven people, and a job that was putting together massive solemn assemblies. I now live in a house the size of a closet, with an over-worked husband (for only a little while longer), still searching for a church and a community, while working THE MOST mundane job. I haven’t mastered Brother Lawrence’s beautiful skill of “Practicing the Presence.” I rarely remember the truth, “He isn’t far away. He isn’t far away. He is in me. He is in me.” I have been scribbling within the same journal for 8 months, and I’ve become addicted to the most ridiculous TV sitcoms.

But for all of us, there is the beauty of the invitation.

We CAN know Him. Now. In this hour. He can be known. Spiritual boredom has a remedy. Even the wilderness contains His whispers.

And even more, He’s coming soon. There is a thrill for the human soul in this season of the Lord’s return. There is an adventure near…

So I guess this is all to say - If I’m not super cool, I put no hope in such thing. And if you are super cool, it means nothing to me (and I say that with the gentlest meaning: You are more than your outfit, your skill, and your music choices). I think the day I meet the Lord, His evaluation will have nothing to do with that sort of thing. For that I am so thankful. 



"and let the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace."