3/24/2005 07:50:00 AM|||Laura|||

Here it is March 23rd - my last post was at the end of October. What happened? Nothing... nothing except I fell out of the habit of posting. I've still been attending church and covenant group, but it has been about 5 months since I've done a regular daily bible study. (What is a covenant group?) I don't have a good reason. The reason I started this blog was to have a record of my progress, and just maybe to help others in the same position as me - struggling as we all are to pursue holiness in our daily lives and have a closer walk with God. And I do struggle... I missed two weeks for the same reason back in October. Then I have the nerve to wonder why I can't seem to pray... such foolishness and vanity to think I can accomplish anything on my own. I can't draw nearer to God. The movement is NOT initiated on my side. When I have a willing heart and when I set aside all the burdens I have taken upon myself, then He draws me nearer to Himself. Simple, yet so very difficult to do.

Pride was the topic of last nights covenant group, and it certainly applies to me lately. Self-reliance gets me every time - my whole life I was taught that independence is the goal. As a Christian, dependence on God and interdependence on the church body is the goal. The whole thing is a real paradigm shift for me, and somehow I can't seem to learn it "once and for all." I have to keep on re-learning it daily.

People are wholly dependent on God whether they like it or not, whether they realize it or not. The blessing of being Christian is that (in spite of being considered wingnuts who wouldn't know reality if it bit us on the butt by the rest of the world) we enjoy the privilege of seeing reality, at least in part, or perhaps through a glass darkly as Paul says. In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (book 2 of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy set) Zaphod Beeblebrox is sentenced to be put in the Total Perspective Vortex, the ultimate punishment because, "when you are put into the Vortex, you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says 'You are here.'" As Christians, we are able to see that our lives on earth are a breath, a vapor, and that in the light of eternity much of what goes on here is an utter waste of time. In many ways it is meaningless that Bush won or that Terri Schiavo will die sooner rather than later. BUT.... as Christians we may be microscopic dots, but we are the Creator's microscopic dots. To Him, we matter. We are loved. Our lives having meaning in that we love Him back. My prayer for today is that I be more dependent on Him.

|||111167529841449790|||Dependents - not just for April 15th anymore