Doing nothing

Good morning!
I took this photo just a few minutes ago from my apartment window. Do you see what I see? A blue sky!!!!! Summer has finally decided to show its long-awaited face in Cologne. Judging by the fact that I decided to actually post something here, I suppose I have been awakened by the sun as well!

I reached a point in my life recently where I realized that my life, my story, was passing by without my really noticing. Just yesterday as I ran along the Rhein I thought to myself "I live in Europe!!!!!! What in the world?!?!!?!" :)
I haven't been taking enough time to reflect, and have really felt the consequences of that. I had the overwhelming sense that I was just going going going without being truly present. And it was starting to wear on me. So, it seemed that a trip down to the Black Forest to see a counselor/spiritual advisor for several days was in order. I needed to spend considerable time being quiet, getting to know myself, my history, my family, friends - my own life, really, from a different angle. Boy was it worth it.

Details of that time aren't really necessary here, but I can certainly say that God opened up my life, and life in general, to me. So much that I have lost, and those things that I had only thought I had lost, have been restored to me. Yes, restoration: that's the only word that seems to fit. But the funny thing is, I think these lost things have been there all the time! It just never occurred to me to stop to look at them, to feel them, to experience them, receive them. Isn't that how it so often is in our lives? God offers us abundant life, and we somehow see only a small dark corner. So we settle down there, thinking this is what there is to be had. We live there for a little while, but slowly it becomes clear that we've been jibbed. This CANNOT be all there is. And we would be right.

I sat down this morning and opened up to Isaiah 42. Goosebumps. Over, and over, and over again. Again, the world... the real world, opened itself to me. Mercy, grace, justice, LOVE.


Verse 5:
"Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it..."

So I sit here, aware of my breath. Aware that God has given me this breath. And the next. And all those that came before. Aware of my spirit. There are so many different ways to think about our humanness...  are we body, soul and spirit? Or just body and spirit? Or just body? But I don't analyze that right now, I just sit and exist. And it all seems so simple. I breathe in spirit.

Verse 6:
"I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you..."

Yes. Here is my hand. Keep me. Please, keep me. Take me and keep me as you are a light for the nations, as you open eyes that are blind, as you bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and those who sit in darkness.

And then it becomes difficult for me. The simplicity and fragility of my own existence, confronted with
so much darkness, so much pain and suffering in the world. Billions of people whose existence is just as simple and fragile as mine, and they're hoping that someone will come to rescue them out of the hell on earth that they experience. One of my tendencies is at this point to despair, to think that it's all on my shoulders. As Emma in "Once Upon A Time" responded to the news that she was the savior of her fairy tale world, "Well, then, you're all screwed." Exactly. If it is all on my shoulders, then yes, everyone is screwed. Maybe this self-centeredness is just part of the human experience. It certainly is part of mine. But as I read further:

Verse 16:
"I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them."

These are the things that God does. One of the clearest parts of God's message to humankind is that we ALL need a savior. We are all fragile, all blind, all in need of someone to turn our darkness into light. This is what I experienced in those few days I spent in the Black Forest. I'm not just a cog in God's wheel, sent to do God's bidding. God doesn't want to just save other people. God wants to save me, too! God wants to heal me, to lead me along a path that I did not know.
And somehow, as I sit in this reality, it becomes clear to me that as I am healed, these words in Isaiah become true again. How can I despair, how can I look around and say that God is silent, that God isn't doing anything? I simply need to open my eyes to what God is doing in me, and then it becomes clear that God is doing that in everyone else, too.

Sometimes it's all a matter of perspective. Funny, though, that perspective so often comes when I'm "doing nothing."