Abide

There's a difference between being near God and being with him. A lot of us live near. We go to church, we know the verses, we believe the right things, and still there's a kind of distance we can't quite name.

Marsha came to Abide Week this spring carrying a hard few months. She'd been wrestling with one question for a long time: can I stop and be okay? She had decided she couldn't, because stopping meant facing things. In the quiet, she found the opposite. The only way she could be okay was to stop, be still, and actually be with Jesus.

That ache to close the distance is worth paying attention to. It's usually an invitation.

A long weekend is a good time to be unhurried with God.

A lot of us have a slower few days ahead. If you get a quiet morning this weekend, you might let some of it just be unhurried time with God.

Nothing to produce, no agenda. Coffee/tea, a window, an open Bible if you want one.

He's good company. That's reason enough.

Happy Fourth, friends.

Change in the Christian life is usually slow. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next, Paul writes, as we behold him. Degree by degree, not all at once.

That's worth saying plainly, because we can start to expect a single dramatic moment that fixes everything. The deeper change tends to come from showing up to God again and again over years, more than from one high point.

I hope you don't find that discouraging. I hope you find it freeing. A slow, ordinary faithfulness is the path, and it's open to every one of us.

Like a tree planted by streams of water. That's the picture Psalm 1 gives of a life rooted in God. It still meets dry seasons. It just doesn't wither in them, because the roots reach water the surface can't see.

We can't always control the heat of a given season. We can pay attention to where our roots are going.