I really don’t have time for this writing this a.m., with a flight leaving for Ft. Worth in a few hours, but I felt compelled to express the anticipation I feel every morning that I awake!
It has been this way for years, a sense that God is awaiting my awakening and that there will be something fresh for me as I simply pick up His Word each day. Even though I have read these same words for decades, they seem inexhaustible in their ability to encourage my life. It has little to do with the stories, for most of them have long sense been etched on my mind through repetition. It must be the thoughts that bubble up in my spirit as I literally become a part of the life of the writer?
This morning it was Mark, and though not by any design nor am I sure by coincidence, these same chapters are being discussed from the pulpit where I attend. It’s like God designs this personal yet providential journey for me each year, built around this ancient but life giving writ? You see, I read the scriptures sequentially every year and have for over thirty years. Yet here I sit this a.m. reading these same writings of antiquity, captured years after the event, by one of Jesus’ followers and the very letters are speaking to me as if they occurred just before sun up today?
How does this happen? Maybe it’s because of the way I was raised, the Bible being a center piece in our home, but that is simply religion. Possibly, because I have attempted to give preeminence to the God I serve and in doing so, have seen these same miracles first hand in my life. The story this morning, a struggling woman who folds into a crowd but somehow manages to get close enough to this preacher to touch the hem of his garment. If I might paraphrase, this “man of God” stops on his journey toward Jarius’ home, headed to pray for the daughter of this synagogue leader. He is surrounded by a gawking multitude with little room to even breathe. He suddenly says, “Who touched me.” His overly protective followers wonder, probably tired themselves, intently caring for this man whom they believe has some great significance politically in the future. Has he been up to long, they ask themselves? “Master, you have this great crowd pressing around you and you say, “‘who touched me?’” “Virtue went out of me, something miraculous just happened?” he announces!
Why am I so moved by Mark’s reflections on these days that must have occurred much earlier in his life? How does he recall such detail? How do those stories feed my life though living in a completely different world? It’s not hard for me to explain this, though the preservation of the scriptures is a mystery! Their validity and reliability are certainly reinforced by the overlap between the stories written by the various gospel contributors, a scarlet thread woven in from Genesis to Revelation, through writers who except for a few, never knew each other and even lived on different continents!
Maybe I can relate through experience, for when one follows Him consistently for decades, they too experience the reality of similar God moments.
Every morning I now anticipate such moments and can hardly wait for others to wake up so we can move into play! Maybe it’s the fact that I have a personal journey with a present God who lives within my spirit.
This love affair continues, but I must catch a plane!
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