what if we aren’t at our best in the midst of all the buzz and whirlwind of activity? what if each of us is to slow down, or-shocker!- stop, and take life in. take faith in. take God in.

stay with me now.

what if, in trying to volunteer everywhere, serve everywhere, love everyone, and do everything, we were really missing the point? what if in doing all these thing, we were really doing nothing at all?

now, I am pretty young and very inexperienced, and for the most part, not wise. but i do know that when i was trying to do everything, that it was wrong. there was something about it that was not me, that didn’t sit right.

i am not the one to speak on behalf of God and say what each of us should do. but i just feel like maybe life with Christ is slower, more relaxed, and quieter. that in the stillness we can hear much more clearly.

ask me in a couple of years what i think about this. after i have graduated college and moved on in my life into the next phase in which God chooses to bring.

and this is just it, sometimes its like we choose what we should do, or we don’t feel like we are doing enough. intentions are good- we want to be instruments, we want to serve, we want to be good people. though salvation is not about that, we all want to be good people.

i think it is much simpler. this semester, or year actually, i had to take time off. time away from all those ministries, from trying to spend all my time with people who don’t know Christ, time away from doing something service oriented because i found that what i really wanted in doing those things was to wash away the guilt. i contemplated doing many things this semester because i hated feeling the guilt of not being a good person volunteering all my time or doing all this ministry. i wanted to have something to say to myself, to others, and to God- “hey, i’m doing this. i’ve got it together.”

and what place are we at right now? that we must have “teams” to do a specific type of ministry? why doesn’t it flow anymore?

maybe it never did, and i am certainly not qualified to make some brilliant statement about the complex state of affairs in modern christianity. but i just wonder how churches are so big, or ministries are such that there must be a team to serve some specific type of person just to get someone to hang out with them.

don’t hear (or rather-read) me wrong, i don’t think these things are bad. i just honestly wonder why ministry to one another doesn’t flow more naturally. human nature? modern culture? humongo churches?

i have discovered that i am in fact, not at my best when caught up in activity. that simple living is enough. i have experienced a move toward greater intimacy with Him. and with desires to someday serve others in natural relationships- within the church and amongst those who do not yet know our God.

i’ve said this once and i will say it hundreds more times, i think that God is there in our busyness, but i think he is also there in our solitude. in the quietness of mind that looks to him. that it is the simple moments in which we ca hear him more clearly.

not that God doesn’t speak in crazy ways even in our hustle and bustle. but look around this hustle and bustle. how often do people see Him? how often do I take the time to notice Him? rarely.

The snare in the Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of his mercy that He does not let you know it…It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him.

all of that to say that i don’t think i can be content unless he is pouring rivers of living water through me. and that i have discovered that it is not in the craziness and stress and doing that i have found this. it has been so much closer as i have taken peaceful afternoons to myself, meditated some, no longer tried to hang out with everyone every other week, and really just tried to calm down.

i like to take the time to further search for His peace and His Spirit.