The Good Word

I feel that the spiritual fog that has enveloped me over the last few months was finally lifted on Wednesday night. And it all began with a video. But let me digress…

In my day to day living and spinning on a giant ball in the midst of an even bigger universe I give very little thought to the wonder of creation. When I first moved to Colorado there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t notice the splendor of the mountains.

Within my first couple of days in Colorado Springs I had a co-worker inform me that if you really look, the mountains will look different every single day. And it’s true. Pike’s Peak at times varies in shades of grey, blue, green, purple, orange, white, and some days, when it is especially wintry outside, you can’t even see the top.

But for the last few months I stopped looking at the mountains. They in no way ceased to be impressive but they, like my life, seemed routine. My routine looks like this:

Wake up too late, shower, pick at my face, do my make-up, pause to look longingly at an old sorority hoodie and torn jeans and then find something that meets my company’s dress code, brush my teeth, grab a tumbler full of coffee, and drive to work—and then here I am again, an invisible chain around my ankle that ties me to my desk—answer emails, send emails, take phone calls, make phone calls—put  in my time, cram my evening full of social activities, stay up too late, go to bed. Wake up too late, frantically get ready…and it starts all over again.

In the midst of living an Office Space existence of 8-5, 8-5, 8-5, day after day, week after week, I do my best to demonstrate flair in the form of cute shoes and big jewelry. But I often feel like I’m missing out on the bigger picture.

It’s hard to pray sometimes when you sit in a grey cube and stare at a monitor all day. It’s even harder to really press into spiritual matters when your job entails spending all day analyzing other people spiritual insights in terms of how good they are at speaking and if their story would be a good fit on our radio broadcast. With such an overload of testimonies and stories I sometimes feel like my heart can’t take it all in so I just let things bounce off.

But on Wednesday I started reading a new book. It’s called Crazy Love and it’s by this pastor in CA named Frances Chan. In the first chapter he uses an analogy that hit through the wall of my heart and awakened me from my spiritual fog.  He states, 

“Not being able to fully understand God is frustrating, but it is ridiculous for us to think we have the right to limit God to something we are capable of comprehending. What a stunted, insignificant god that would be! If my mind is the size of a soda can and God is the size of all the oceans, it would be stupid for me to say He is only the small amount of water I can scoop into my little can. God is so much bigger, so far beyond our time-encased, air/food/sleep–dependent lives.”

After reading that passage I watched a video he has on his website: www.crazylovebook.com Under Videos “The Awe Factor of God” and I was blown away by the images I saw.

Somewhere along the way how I interact with God had become routine as well as my prayers--saying the same things, thinking the same things, and somehow expecting different results. In chapter one Chan highlights Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 as passages that magnify God on His throne.

The one who created the entire Universe created me. This God who sits on a throne with the appearance of thunder and emeralds with creatures covered in eyes that call out every moment of every day “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty” sent His son Jesus to die on the cross for me.

And so I fell to my knees and prayed in a way that I’ve never experienced before and I actually cried tears of gratitude for the wonder of it all.

The next morning I woke and I wasn’t bored of my life anymore and when I drove to work I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the mountains, and even later in the day sitting behind my desk I was amazed how nothing about God is within my comprehension and nothing about Him is routine.

Have any of you had any new spiritual insights? Or any books that you’ve read that have forever changed the way you interact with God? I would love to hear about

Reading Surprised by Joy, a spiritual autobiography by C.S. Lewis, I came across a passage that I think is worth sharing. It’s Lewis’s version of an ideal day. A model worth thinking about:

We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as archetype, so that what I still mean when I speak of a “normal” day (and lament that normal days are so rare) is a day of the Bookham pattern. For if I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better.

…

At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world… The only friend to walk with is one…who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a half, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared. The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quart past four. Tea should be taken in solitude…For eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. Of course not all books are suitable for mealtime reading. It would be a kind of blasphemy to read poetry at table.

…

At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and at Bookham I had none) there is no reason why you should even be in bed later than eleven.

…

But when is a man to write his letters?…You forget that I am describing the hippy life I led…or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is an essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock.

When I first considered posting this I thought, “well, no one could actually live this type of day, we all have jobs in which our schedule is beyond our control.” But, I realized that a good many of you regulars are either self-employed, or teachers who have the leisure of living at least three months of your year in whatever way you see fit.

Let me know what you think.