Everyday I read random blogs that don't really encourage or challenge me, they just distract. Everyday I check the facerbook way too many times. Everyday I read whatever magazines are laying around my room. Everyday I text way too much - avoiding time to sit still and reflect or pray. I've been losing interest in spiritual things that used to help keep me on track, or at least make me think and feel and not just be blank - like music (Sara Groves, Superchic[k], Rita Springer) the Gods Politics blog, memorizing Truth, and reading, whodathought it, the Bible. I've been getting tangled in this sick web of laziness, fear, worry, and regret, with moments of breakdown and redemption mixed in.
Today I was encouraged by Hosea 1. The first few verses discuss Hosea and Gomer's children and their painfully poignant names. Then, in v. 1o, there's a shift, and one gorgeous word that makes me weep: YET. I opened up my Bible to to that one word today and it spoke hope and life. Thank you Jesus for all the trillions of "yet"s that you enabled by your love and grace.
Then... later tonight I was thinking about my recent, obsessive blog reading habits and decided that maybe one step in the right direction would be to find some Christian blogs for women that were both creative and thoughtful, and could hold my attention. So I googled that and lo-and-behold, found one called Tapestry and Father used this post about Mark 5:25-34 (where the diseased woman in the crowd touches Jesus's cloak and is healed) to move me:
This story reminds me to do two things:
1 - reach for Jesus
2 - be brave... Jesus does not change. He is the same compassionate Savior today. He is a Restorer. And this story encourages me to understand that at the times where I feel like He feels miles away and I feel lonely and hopeless, that perhaps I need to be brave and reach for Him in honest prayer. Even in the midst of my fear and shame.
Other people may fail me. Other people may take advantage, or mock, or be completely apathetic. I may fail myself. Not Jesus. He will not despise us when we reach out for Him.
He calls us daughters.
I needed that instruction, that reminder: drop the screens of fearfulness, and reach out for Jesus with brave hope. So yeah, that's where I am - seeking, finding, reaching, and asking/letting God do the untangling.
