Colossians 3:15-17 (MSG)
Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.
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It’s 5:30am again. By now, five years into motherhood, I thought I would have adjusted to this alarm clock. I am thrust into reality instantly, and it’s stunts me every dawn. I rush into my day, despite my desperation to rise earlier than my sleeping babes and get moving, or get in the Word; anything but roll over and sleep some more. But my body, my soul, my mind longs deeply for more sleep more often… some mornings my good intentions are left lost in my dreams.
Quiet times look different in each season of life. Newly married, new house, new church, new job, new schedule, new schools, new regime, new health kick, new babies… Life is always bringing us into new seasons and new opportunities to glean from it.
I keep hearing this whisper, this calling to come into His presence, but I shoo it away. I yearn to be there, in the secret place. Often. But I cannot for the life of me. Find. The. Time. I was ready to watch another episode, the tugging on my heart, “come sweet one, just sit a while”… So tonight under the dim of a fairy lit deck, with a green tea with a million thoughts plaguing my mind, I realise I haven’t made room for time. I haven’t carved space for His Word to settle into the nooks and crannies of my heart. It’s no wonder I find it difficult to go to sleep most nights, especially in those busy days and seasons, where I forget time and my thoughts are left caged. It’s this perpetual going that has forced my focus else where. It’s in those moments where the babes are asleep in the car and I take the long, long, long way home or I decide to settle into bed having switched off the TV despite its beckoning to watch the next episode… it’s in the decluttering of the going I’m caught sifting and filing and chatting and listening with my thoughts before the Lord and finding space in the being… it is liberating.
It is when I begin to hear Him clearly.
It is when I feel like I have found home.
Then I stumble across Colossians 3:15-17.
Cultivate Thankfulness. And, let the Word of Christ have run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives… I don’t make room for it. In fact, I run from it. I run from allowing God to speak into some of those crushing moments where ice cream and chocolate are my comfort. Or those exhausting moments when coffee befriends me. Or my schedule means I can’t stop to allow my thoughts a space to find rest. I find ways to complain, or shift my gratitude to attitude. And as for letting the Word have run of our house. I want to live worship out in my life every day, not just Sunday. Some would say I probably do a pretty good job of that already, but I know I could make more room. I’ve given worship some room in our lives, but not plenty.
When we create space in our busy lives to spend time in His Word, in worship and conversation with Him, we create opportunity to discover some of the most precious things Holy Spirit can reveal to us. When we clear out the junk, we give way to what He wants to say not people, or our circumstances. When we follow that still small voice calling to come away with Him, we find home.
Sweet one, what is stopping you from making room in your day to day to get away with Him? How can you make more room in your life for His voice today?
until next time… xox