Scripture: Luke 2:41-52
Journal: What are you treasuring in your heart these days? How are you being captured by the wonder and
beauty of God? How are you nurturing
this life within and around you?
Reflection:
If you really knew me you would know that
whenever I am in town I start every morning with a visit to Chick-Fil-A.
It is more than just the food (which is great by the way), it is the
space. For twenty-plus years now Chick-Fil-A, sitting in my car
in an isolated corner of the parking lot, has been the place I have spent my
time with Jesus. As a matter of fact, I was there just this
morning. It has been a rich and wonderful space for me, a place where God
has met me deeply, a place where I have read and prayed and journaled and
groaned and grinned and wept. It has been a place where God has
gotten his hands on me, where he has drawn his lips close to my ear, and drawn
my soul close to his heart. And it is still a place where he
continues to transform me.
Well, today I was about
halfway through my morning routine when I went into the restaurant to get a
refill, which is also a part of my morning routine. And seeing as
how I've been going to this particular Chick-Fil-A for about 15 years, I know
most of the people in the store pretty well by know. As a matter of fact,
I've seen a lot of them come and go through the years. As I was
entering the store two of the "regulars" were on their way
out. And after we exchanged a few words of greeting, one of them
said to the other, "You go on, I am going to piddle for a
minute." At which point she came away from the door and began to
meander through the restaurant, greeting people and talking to some of the
other "regulars."
Something about the way she
said it caught me. And something about what she then starting doing,
caught me even more. And as I walked back to my car I began to think
about what I had just seen and heard. And I began to be captured by the
idea, and the practice, of piddling. And the more I thought
about it, the more I saw its spiritual value. For most of
us piddling is not a positive word, or activity. As a matter of
fact, most of the dictionaries I've checked define the word negatively, as
the act or habit of wasting time. But what the world considers
wasting time, might be the very thing God requires in order to live life
in union with him. Life with God requires us to live at a different pace,
to have a different mindset, to pay attention. It requires us to not be
so hell-bent on activity for activity's sake. It requires us to not
be so controlled by our own schedules, so driven by our own agendas,
and so consumed with our own need to be productive and efficient that
we miss the things of God that are right under our noses. Piddling is a
refusal to allow our lives to be controlled by a frenzied pace. It
is a determination to live differently; to stop and slow down, to linger
and pay attention, to be on the lookout for the deeper things of life
that can only been seen and experienced if we slow down and intentionally
look below the surface.
That's the beauty of what this woman
was doing. She was saying, "I'm not ready to rush off to the next
thing just yet. I want to see if there's something else here, something
more, something deeper that I would've missed it I wouldn't have been paying
attention. I want to be open to the present moment. I want to be
fully here, explore the here and now, and find its riches. So, if
you don't mind, I think I'm just going to hang around for a
while." May we learn how to do the same.
Prayer
Closing
Prayer: Lord God, stop me in my tracks and capture me
with the splendor of who you are and what you are doing within and around me.
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