Had a good talk with my friend Scott Parr this morning, and it solidified for me something that God is trying to remind me of: that He is regularly speaking to me through life, through people, through scripture...

Not a new idea for me, but I think over the past few years, I've felt just confused enough about life and just hurt enough by its events to feel a bit abandoned by God and to stop believing in practicality that He's going to break into my world with any regularity. Notice how I said that - "my world"... I think He's reminding me that it's not my world, it's His. I've been so stressed and disappointed by the way life is going in "my world" that I've been fairly unable or unwilling to listen to what God might be telling me about His world through it all.

Ok, I have a tendency to make blanket statements like that... I haven't been completely shut off from listening to God's voice for the last few years, but I think the majority of my time has been spent letting my mind be constantly thinking, thinking, thinking about the here and now, and I've had a big drought of devoting time to stopping and listening. Not writing much is a symptom of that. Bouts w/ mild depression and such things are, at least partially, symptoms of that. We're made to pay attention to what God is saying to us on a daily basis.

Because here's the thing I'm in the beginning stages of remembering - the things God says to us are absolutely, unequivocally life-giving. God is in the business of leading us into abundant life - not necessarily comfort, happiness, "success"... abundant life, which I think includes an inner peace that knows inner worth bestowed by God's mercy, even when comfort, happiness, and success don't seem anywhere within reach.

God's words... I think it's easy as a pastor, whose "business" is God's words, to lose the sense of awe and wonder that's appropriate for the fact that the God of the universe speaks to me intimately. But in this moment, I'm wanting to lay down all the things I tend to use to fill up my time and my thoughts, because I'm getting little tastes again of what it's like when God breathes new life and hope into "my world." It's making me hungry, and I want to get hungrier and hungrier.