Aha!

I hope your celebrations of our Savior's birth were filled with hope, peace, and great joy this year! Our Christmas decorations are down, and 2010 was welcomed warmly in our home yesterday as the Ohio State Buckeyes won the Rose Bowl! Now if my husband was authoring this post the remainder of it would consist of statistics, plays, and maybe even a few x's and o's figures! The man is, as they say, happy as a pig in mud with his team's victory!

But he's not the author today, so let's return to the brief statement I made regarding our Christmas decorations being down. What a bittersweet activity. Bitter because the decorations are so pretty and festive, and sweet because after several weeks it all starts to look like clutter to me and I cannot wait to take them down and clean my house! Funny how beautiful things can start to look like clutter! I was listening to my ipod play list while sweeping our dining room floor, and the Holy Spirit began to minister to me as the song You Are by Mark Roach was playing. I just love how God often intercepts the ordinary and mundane to minister to His people... meets us right where we are - physically, mentally, and spiritually. Our Good Shepherd knows His sheep, and He tends to us. One of the many things I love about our God is that we do not have to get our act together in order for Him to tend to us! We don't have to try harder, be better, or know more - He sees us and knows our hearts and He meets us right where we are - regardless of how messy our stuff is. What He impressed upon me a couple days ago was so precious to me that I stopped to share it with my husband in that moment, and now I feel compelled to share it with you.

As this song resonated in my mind and heart, I reflected on who God is and what He has done for me, and I was struck anew that it is God who pursues me. I cannot imagine or comprehend the depth of His love, nor can I understand why He loves me - unworthy as I am. His love for me is beyond my wildest imagination and the explanation of His passion eludes me. The Holy Spirit showed me that at times my focus has been too much on my love for Him... God has, by His grace, given me a desire to love Him with my whole heart - though I fall so short of this desire every day. What the Holy Spirit revealed to me was that in my zeal to love Him, my focus is at times too much on my love for Him... how well I am loving Him, or what I could be doing better to demonstrate my love for Him. While these are good desires, at times I have focused on them more than resting in His love for me. This can result in my pursuit of Him to occupy center stage rather than resting in His pursuit of me! If my focus is too concentrated on my love for Him, then really my focus is on me - not Him! And I have learned many times and in many ways that whenever my focus is on myself, that is never, ever good! This is certainly not to mean that I should not continue to strive to love God with all my heart, but a change in perspective on my part was needed on that particular day. This was not a new revolutionary truth for me, but sometimes God takes something we know that is stored somewhere in the back of our brains and with a wind of His Spirit He blows the dust off and allows us to receive a fresh revelation that is perfect for our circumstances - perfect for the moment He reveals it. An Aha! moment. Boy am I glad God provides Aha! moments.

I don't know if this makes one bit of sense to you today. Sometimes an Aha! moment is so personal that it really only makes perfect sense to the one who God provided it for. I'm just following through on what I believe God is calling me to share tonight. Perhaps you've had a recent Aha! moment you'd like to share? I'd love to rejoice with you over what God has revealed to you!