CHANGE THE POND YOU SWIM IN

Have you come home from a retreat or pilgrimage or any event on a spiritual high and want to find a way to preserve it?  Don’t try too hard lest you end up like Peter at the Transfiguration wanting to build booths and make the moment last and gets a finger waved at him by Christ.

 

Of course we want it to last, but that is not the point of it.  It’s like moments of intense love that we feel for another person.  But truth be told, after the puppy love passes, those become moments in our lives, not a 24 hour, I can’t stop thinking about you, I can’t sleep, can’t eat, rotten as a country western song type of love.  Those are booster shots that help us get through the day to day living and loving (which can be quite great by the way) but puppy love is not the love Jesus wants us to have for each other as our daily meat.  (A post for another day.)

 

But there IS something that we do want to carry on about those high spots.  How do you make their inspiration last?  Why do the coals seems to cool so quickly when we go back to our old routine?

 

Perhaps because we go back to the old routine.  Hopefully you have changed dramatically, or have had your eyes or heart opened, how should that change your life?  Someone just over an addiction cannot go back to their old habits and environments.  Things must change because they are changing.  If you have had a new awakening, how will your environment help foster it?  Do you still have Deaf Leppard posters on your walls and listen to raunchy music?  Are you careful about what you watch mindlessly on T.V. or the computer or what you read?  Where do you hang out?  Where do you get nourishment to feed that new life within you?  Who will you talk with/Email or what have you?  How will you pray?  When will you find silence?  What are you willing to suffer?  What is your art, your hobby, your expressions of love for others?  What is your ministry?  What is your outreach?  In short, what kind of support system are you building?

 

Or are you just hoping it will last without really changing anything?

 

It’s hard for even love to withstand that.