Continuing the Conversation

These are the golden sessions, when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze, and our drinks at our elbows, when the whole world – and something beyond the world – opens itself to our minds as we talk, and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are free men and equals, as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time, an affection, mellowed by the years unfolds us. Life, natural life, has no better gift than friendship. Who could have deserved it?
-C.S. Lewis

In an effort to capture that sense of wonder in peering into that something beyond the world that Lewis refers to here, and in a desire to continue the conversation begun so long ago in the depths of eternity past and that we are invited to participate in now, I want to share a bit of where I find myself to be this day.

Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths… -Psalm 25:4

I am living right now in one of the most painful and one of the most dangerous times of my life because I know what my calling is – that is to say, I have some familiarity with that great mystery of my heart's presence and place in the Great Drama that is unfolding even now… I know what I am made to do and how I am to walk with God and even where, in a sense, it will be or at least what it will look some time from now to be walking with God. But, I am not currently living in my calling, at least not fully. I mean, I am living in this mystery, but there is so much more to it, and for possibly the first time in my walk with God, I see some of the more that is out there.

This discrepancy between the life I am living and the life I am called to, or at least the life that is offered, is the source of much discontent. It raises some concerns and certainly some questions. Am I not walking there because I am not yet ready? Because I am not walking with God well? Have I made a bad decision or series of decisions that is keeping me from that? Have I gotten lost somehow?

You have made known to me the path of life… -Psalm 16:11

These questions, and of course the confusion from the Evil One and his slew of Lying Tongues as they pounce on that like some wild hyenas on a carcass to shred and tear with their own interpretations and deceit, most accurate describe where I find my heart this morning.

Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps. –Psalm 85:13

In a sense, I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge peering in through the glass on the outside of the dance hall looking into his life prompted by the ghost of Christmas past, with the crucial difference that I am not looking into my past, but into a sort of future, a kind of what-could-be if I walk with God well, a peering further along on this path of life, and it is really exciting, and that the prompting is not coming from a ghost of Christmas but from the Spirit himself that gave us Christmas, the Spirit of God.

God has intrigued me.