Skip to main content

Space . . .

. . . the final frontier. And I don't mean Star Trek. I mean brain-space, heart-space, space for thought. Space for God.

Life is full. Each day bombards us with a cacophony of sights and sounds. It takes work on our part to sort through this barrage and pull out the information we need, the information we want, the images, the thoughts that will belong to us and to our memories.

In addition to this onslaught of stimulation, most of us carry around a to-do list so long that it wouldn't fit on a triple roll of Charmin written in a size six font. We're a civilization that exists on over-load.

Captain Kirk had to risk taking the Enterprise out of its dock in order to explore that final frontier because space doesn't just happen. It doesn't come to us nor does it scream at us for attention. It doesn't jump up and down flailing its arms. Some of us need more of it than others.

Growing up, our next door neighbor used to sit out in his screened-in porch for hours every day. No book. No music. Just him. I took it for granted then. That's just what Rich did. Now I envy that time he took every day. I want to follow his example. I want to purposely make space - internal space. I want to make time for the dust that comes from each day's information attack to settle so I can see clearly once again. I want to sit still and allow the clamor of life to quiet so that I can hear God's voice instead of my own or the myriad of others that come at me each day. I want to intentionally sift through my life and let fall those things that aren't mine to hold onto and to make space to hold onto those things that are.

I want to find the unexplored space within my soul that is meant for God alone, and I want to go there every day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

As A Child

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3 Become like little children? Really? Children are definitely cute and innocent, but that pretty much covers the positive qualities. On the negative side, however, the list is quite a bit lengthier: demanding, dependent, self-centered, messy, often smelly, expensive, and embarrassingly honest. So why? WHY in the world would Jesus tell us to become like little children? WHY in the world would He want that? What was He thinking?! Well, He was a thirty-something year-old bachelor. Maybe He didn't really know what He was talking about when He said that. I mean, if we come to Him like little children, it's pretty much guaranteed to be messy. We're likely to be crabby, cranky. We might be downright angry. Prayer-ADD is hard to control on a good day. If we're not on top of it, if we don't have our list in front of us to focus our thoughts, we...

The Hug That Said It All

I witnessed a hug the other day. Big deal, right? People see other people hug all the time. Yeah, but this was a hug that melted my heart. We attended a graduation party in honor of our nephew. It was held under a pavilion. There was quite a spread of food, and each table was loaded with decorations and favors (very nicely done, Ange!). Obviously a lot of work . . . a lot of love was poured into this party. As the evening wound down, many of us hung around to help clean up. That's the un-fun part of a party. The un-fun part of this party became even more un-fun when, in an attempt to dump a drum of trash into a plastic trash bag, wet, gooey, smelley garbage ended up on the concrete floor of the pavilion. It was rank and disgusting, but my sister-in-law (the afore mentioned "Ange.") cleaned up without complaint. When the graduate meandered by shortly thereafter, I jokingly told him, in a scolding voice, that he had better get down on his knees in gratitude for all his moth...

More Than Enough

Life is teeming with reminders of our need for God. Take today for example: I'm exhausted. I have this ridiculously sensitive body rhythm, and I messed it up yesterday. I went to St. Louis with a mother and daughter. The daughter is strongly considering an extended stay in Burkina Faso as a missionary. So the mother/daughter team that have been there/done that spent the day with the mother/daughter team in the early stages of going there/doing that. It was a great time. Ami and I both enjoyed sharing our experiences, and by their own admission, the time was profitable for the other mother and daughter; but for me, to talk for a full eight hours is waaaayyy past my conversation limit. "Conversation limit?" Yep. Conversation limit. A previous boss used to cite some statistic about how many words an average woman speaks each day as compared to the average man. He'd see me talking and joke that I hadn't reached my quota for the day. My quota, however, is much lower ...