What is your favorite thing about following Jesus?
This question drifted through my thoughts as I sat on my porch soaking up a glorious morning. “I love this,” my heart responded in gratitude as I thought about the unspeakable blessing of abiding in his presence, day after day, decade after decade. “I love it especially when your Spirit is alive and moving and I am flourishing in the work you’ve made me to do.” I reflected on the seasons when this has been especially true. Times in my life when I’ve been utterly compelled to surrender… to action… to obedience. Times when the Spirit has given me vision for ministry… words for writing… meaningful work. “I love it best when my life is alive in the Spirit’s flow.”
And then—
What is hard about following Jesus?
“Oh, that’s easy. The seasons of waiting.”
Waiting for the Spirit. Waiting to follow. Waiting, surrendered, not knowing, trusting.
Waiting is hard.
I have been waiting, lately. I’ll let you in on a secret. You—faithful readers. When weeks go by without a new post… when the blog is silent… chances are, the Spirit is, too. Writing for me is Spirit language. I literally can’t write anything meaningful without His flow. Oh—I can try. I can force words onto a page in desperate attempts to lure the Spirit into giving me a morsel of something to chew on. Paragraphs I’ll later save into a file labeled “2 B Continued”…and likely eventually move to “Trash.”
I woke one morning, a while back, remembering a dream. I dream often. Most of my dreams are the typical variety—fragments of real life mixed with nonsense. The day’s conversations on loop, with no real resolution. Puzzling through some dilemma that doesn’t really need solving. Typical dreams. But then, once in a while, I’ll wake remembering something that feels very much like a word from God, and I pick up my journal, and I write it down.
Journal
May 26, 2024
I had a dream I want to remember.
In my dream there were decisions to make and tasks to accomplish.
I was in a hurry, rushing, frantic.
Suddenly I realized I was running alongside a river. I felt compelled to sit down.
I stayed, sitting by the water, for some time.
Finally I decided it was time to proceed, and get on with my tasks.
But then I noticed something curious.
While I’d been resting, my tasks had been accomplished, my decisions made, without me.
And I knew.
The River is the Spirit of God.
Point taken: I am in a season of waiting on the Spirit. And no matter how hard I try to move things along in my own self-effort, there will be no real movement until the Spirit says it’s time. I know this is true. Like it or not.
This waiting has been personal, as well as communal. Earlier this month I waited alongside my church community… my Jesus family… grieving… praying day and night. Two wives… moms of young boys… waiting in anguish. Two daddies who didn’t make it. This is their story, not mine to share. But I do mention it because it has consumed my thoughts in these weeks of waiting, and I’ve learned something from it. I’ve understood how God calls us to pray for the stranger who is a sister. And now I know… if… when… the day comes for me to face my own gut-punch suffering… I can be sure the Spirit will call people I’ve never met to pray for me, too. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). What a beautiful thing to find our hearts knit tight to family we may not meet face-to-face until eternity. But we pray and we ache and we WAIT TOGETHER.
I have watched, too, as my mom-in-law waits faithfully, compassionately, by a hospital bed. My husband’s dad has had Alzheimers for several years. Alzheimers is a slow letting go. Marge has cared for him, patiently, expertly, year after year. She is a nurse by vocation, and now she’s found herself nursing her husband all these years with tender care. But lately Erle has grown terribly week. He began falling. Thus the hospital stay… and the waiting. This week Marge waits (and we wait with her) for Dad’s new room to be ready at the “Cottages” where he’ll move next week. And I watch, taking note of a wife’s devotion, her patient love. Praying for grace to follow in her footsteps.
I am waiting, too. My own waiting feels trivial in comparison. My waiting feels easy. I wait through a season of spring turning into summer. I wait—resting along the shores of a River. I wait trusting. Trusting. Trusting.
I’d love to know what’s next. What work is being prepared in this waiting? What movement of the Spirit will propel me into my next season of ministry and vocation? I am eager to get busy. I am eager for a task-list… a timeline… an agenda. But one thing I have learned in my years of following the Spirit’s lead. I can turn myself inside-out trying to figure things out in my own self-effort, and accomplish nothing. The Wind will blow when He is good and ready.
The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
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