Another meeting schedules me. Another phone call interrupts. A text dings on my cell. I jot a note down to attend to later and somehow hope its purpose will rise at a remembered time or just in time. Two more conversations demand focus and attention before I can, with measured intent, inhale and arrest the clock to enjoin a moment faithfully. Then, exhalation finds someone else’s agenda grabbing at me. Inaudible thoughts waver between these conflicting priorities. I decide to attend to my own when things settle down. Of course, things never settle down. Why do I allow myself to become unintentional in my day? Is there something worthy about all these distractions?
A punctuated staccato rhythm paces my days. One day mimics another. I’m up at 5 a.m. Then, devotion, prayer, writing thoughts, dress and breakfast all occupy my morning routine before I leave at seven. Work has its own pull away from my intention. My work schedule ends as dusk encroaches. Evening routines begin. All passes into sleep to repeat again tomorrow. And that colorless, regular, measured and ticking dialed clock gives and takes away and cares less. Is this the “much” demanded of me?
Industrious people know winter is coming. But how easy life scatters me in unsuspecting ways. I’m always aware when the tempter comes in my weakness and in the obvious, too. But I never see him come from behind or in the very work I think God is asking me to do, and never do I suspect him in my strength and security. The worst sin is an unsuspecting sin.
It’s a curious mile I journey on my way to cross the Jordan. Outside the boundaries of my curiosity and the constraints the giver and taker imposes are God’s truths seeping through the slivers of thought running through my mind. I realize with every unsuspecting sin, new awakenings come and new life awaits me around every corner. I think, don’t most sins come from want? And doesn’t want obscure my relationship with God?
In her song, “Long Ride Home,” Patti Griffin sings a wonderful phrase, “ain’t nothing left at all at the end of being proud.” Sounds like a broken life or two can be found there. I’ll settle for the end of want if God is there to awaken me. Mom always said my want would pass. I’m waiting.
Traveling my curious mile, I have spent my causes and learned not to follow them. My savoring has produced a thousand perceptions right and wrong, righted and wronged again. And every day that never settled down, when every want and all its gravity pulled away my good intention, I always felt God tugging me with His own unsuspecting interruption. He just kept showing up around those corners.
Another meeting, a phone call, another text – it is as it wills. Life does not settle down. But it’s a fine interruption when good intentions winch into my reality.
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15, NKJV).ss
This passage helped me see I simply want too much; “You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
I made a firm decision to “want” less, and by God’s Grace and Holy Spirit have reaped much peace…and more kindness to others.
Thank you, Deck!