Scraps from my journal indicate that this Christmas I have been dealing with anxiety…. I’m not going to psychoanalyze it but suffice to say, what I have needed most is peace of heart and mind and the rest of God that encompasses both the body and the soul.
in one entry I wrote: “I am parched for beauty though beauty surrounds me.” I sympathize with the woman at the well in Samaria who said, “Please, sir, tell me where I can find this living water that I might not be thirsty again…” How is it that we as believers can be full of the Spirit of God and have the promises of Scripture at our fingertips and yet lack in experiential depth the reality of the words of promise we have been given? Again in my journal I wrote, “I am so thirsty for you, God…I feel that i must be surrounded by Living Water – but if it doesn’t get inside of me and impact the core of my being – if it doesn’t affect change in my life – what good is it?”
The Word of God, Scripture says, is ALIVE and ACTIVE. It is not like other books. You may read it as such, not holding it with authority, not reverencing it as though one passage might forever change you – but that is what it is – it is as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel…and the one opening it must be prepared to be operated on.
Perhaps the times when I am not changed, when I read the Bible but leave as thirsty as I came, perhaps when I carry anxiety more than a moment or an hour is because I refuse to let the scalpel of the Word cut me open – penetrate heart and soul and all that is within me?
Pruning is painful. Changing is painful. Letting go of the illusion of our control over a thing – whether it be our own life or our children or our work or our future – may very well feel like jumping off a cliff – suicide. And in a way, it is. We die to self. We rise to Christ. We let go, and give over, and release a care (truly release it) to God and think we will fall to the ground. And right before we do, our hearts in our stomach and our minds whirling, we are caught. and held. firmly. And the color, the light, the peace, the joy, all enters in, like a rushing river of abundant life. But we have to jump, we have to risk it all to receive it all.
