Come Away with Me

God, life's beautiful at the moment. It's a season of being caught up in the sheer joy of living. Each night, I'm reluctant to go to bed but even more eager for morning to come so I can be resume this dance through life. It's seasons like these that I feel Christ's promised 'life to the full' has accomplished its coup d'etat. 

A couple of minutes ago, as I was walking home from having coffee with a religious sister I was interviewing, an elderly man sitting outside his home beckoned me over. 

"You know, there's something about you," he said. "I can tell that you're a woman of integrity by the way you smiled at me just then. It was the most sincere eye contact anyone's ever made with me. You hold on to that."

It begged a question in my heart: what is it that I'm holding on to? What is the secret of this season?

Yes, I'm swept up in the arms of projects, planning and dreaming and letting beautiful realities unfold from the whispers of the Holy Spirit in my heart. To a certain extent, my joy is flowing out of a sense of purpose and identity in the work I'm doing and the stuff I'm preparing for the Lord.

But, as Jesus has quietly reminded me throughout the prayer of the last 24 hours, those external symptoms only overflow when my heart joins Him in the desert. 

Come away with Me, He calls.

In my zeal for sharing Christ, sometimes I forgot to spend time with Him: I get so caught up in giving things to the Lord that I forget to give Him myself.

I want so badly to invite everyone else into the beauty of this relationship; to fling open the doors of my heart and say, "Here is a meeting place! Let me introduce you to my Beloved."

But if I spend my whole life showcasing the Beloved, I will cease to know Him.

So often it's the challenge we meet in ministry: we become blinded by passion for "the mission" and neglect the One whose Good News we're proclaiming. 

Every day must truly begin in the desert - in a place of exclusive intimacy with Christ - if we are to have any hope of revealing Him to the world.

God is so much bigger than I can fathom; so much richer in mercy and Truth and Love than I can understand. The moment I think I have contained Him in a nice little package I can present to the world is the moment I have nothing to give the world: for only fresh skins can contain the new wine He is constantly pouring out.

"Solomon said, "Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth? If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain You, how much less this temple that I have built?"

1 Kings 8:22-23

Maybe I can never hope to contain fully all that God has to offer this world. But, in finding my dwelling place in Christ, I can become a dwelling place for Christ, that the world may encounter Him in my soul.

As we head into Lent, Jesus calls our hearts into the desert. He has anointed this moment for us to come away with Him and learn the reason for seasons of grace. 

Walk with Him into the desert. Get to know the Beloved with fresh eyes; contemplate Him before you attempt to communicate Him to the world.

I think that's the secret of a joyful season: to be caught up in the Heart of Mercy, recognising that it is in Him that life to the full is to be found.

Come away with Me

to the place I've prepared for us

Come away

from your frantic necessities

Come away with Me, love, and just be

in the presence of Love once again

Come away and remember who I AM.

AMDG