That one place

Appropriately, I have managed to find some extra time on this extra, laborious day off to write.  It has been a while, and this is much needed.  My fingers are itching and my heart is burning.

I have noticed that this year, my sophomore year, is so completely different in lots of ways, but the one most prominent is the fact that it has forced me to realize how much God changed me as a freshman in college last year.  It's not a bad kind of force.  It's the kind of force that makes you realize you want to do it willingly anyway, you just aren't sure as to how to get started.  It's kind of like being pushed out of an airplane while skydiving. You know you want to jump, but you aren't completely sure until you are pushed.  Then you realize while free-falling that you definitely wanted to be in that exact state.  It took the push to get you there.

Maybe I am the only one who analyzes thoughts, but I find myself having to when I think about anything at all spiritual.  Thoughts of God are so big.  And everything that stems from those thoughts about God, like His plans, His character, His love, His blessings, His comfort, His...everything, is equally large and in the same way bigger than my brain will ever be.  Even writing about how big these thoughts about God are is blowing my mind.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. -Isaiah 55:9

So, I am to that place.  Here I am.  Left pondering the greatest mystery of all mysteries.  Wondering.  How One thing could so captivate me and how I even got to this point in the first place.  When did this awestruck wonder originate?  How did I change so much?

With that gentle force I am realizing how completely transformed I have become by God.  And with that realization I am discovering how completely undeserving and helpless I really am.  And with that realization I am finding that I am completely and literally throwing myself at the feet of this Power that is strong enough to clean even the dirtiest of souls.  And with that realization I am acknowledging the comfort and rest I feel from kneeling on the floor of the source of life itself--the kind of kneeling position you can only get to by crawling on the filth of the ground, one hand in front of the other, pulling yourself to the position of reverence, no matter the cost or expenditure.  And then you kneel.  You kneel and rest.

And it's with that realization that I feel completely renewed and refreshed by His energy and ready to take on the world with God and climb those mountains I always seem to talk about and admire but never really know.  I don't know each and every crevice, rock bed, hill.  I don't even know the height of the peak.  And I don't really know how I got there.

Then I'm left realizing how completely transformed by God I am.  And the whole process continues again except with different types of mountains and plateaus and woods and paths.  It's resurrection all over again.  It's Easter every day.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. -Colossians 3:1

It's like this continual state of awe that never wears off.  Think about this.  We can set our hearts on the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  He is so high up, but we can still set our hearts on Him!  How does that work?  Do we have to throw them up and blindly hope they set themselves perfectly?  God, the Creator of the Universe is so high above the earth and yet He raises us up and reaches down to us with outstretched arms, allowing for us the opportunity and privilege to set our hearts on Him.  He bridged the gap.  He bridges the gap each second.  He bridges the gap every single time we have a thought.

I am at that one place.  That indescribable place.  The mystery revealed yet still a mystery.  That one place, where our bodies are light and his glory is heavy, heavy on our hearts, controlling our every thought and action.  The shining glory that hurts our eyes even when we're staring at the rain and not the sun.  His glory.  His all-surpassing glory.  We cannot box it in.  We cannot fit it in our minds.  It is too great.

And now I am at that place.  That place where nothing else matters.  That place that cannot be explained.  That place where unending joy is somehow simultaneous with a broken heart for all the lost who may never know this place.

I don't know how to explain this place.  I don't even know how I got here.

LMB