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Each day brings its own work just as each week holds those routine tasks that must be finished. These everyday obligations give structure to our lives even if they are not the entirety of them. Life happens as we do the things we do each day, but it also happens in the gaps between what we are doing now and what we will be doing next. It happens whether we notice it or not.
In fact, much of what happens in the gaps goes unattended, if not unnoticed. This happens at least in part because the tasks that occupy our daily schedules receive priority treatment. Those are the things that have to be done. We don’t have time to pay attention to the life that goes on between our priorities.
Perhaps more than time, there is the issue of energy. There is a limited quantity of it. That is true on a global scale as well as in our personal lives. Doing the things we have to do every day and doing them well takes energy. When we have done what has to be done each day, who has the energy to engage the life that inhabits the intervals of our daily routine?
There are those times in our lives when time and energy are not the deciding factors. There are situations when what is called for is courage. Courage to face what has been going on all around us without us paying much attention to it.
Without us paying much attention, our children can grow up, make choices, and choose their own course in life. Without us paying much attention, our most important relationships can get switched to autopilot, languish for want of attention, and erode. Without us paying much attention, our own lives can get so bound up in the duty, obligation and stress of our doing that we fail to notice the absence of zest and passion in our living.
When we are faced with opportunities for growth, it is not time or energy that keep us from noticing what has been going on around us, but courage and resolve. To take a look at the places on our lives that may not be all that we would like for them to be can be frightening, or at least depressing. Doing so can leave us wondering in dismay how things could have gotten this way. It takes courage to move from wondering to addressing the issues and behaviors that have brought us to where we are.
There is a way in which each day has the capacity to make that path we walk more worn. Entrenched in that path, our vision is lowered to where all we can see is a step or two ahead. This is not the most pleasant of days, but it is where we find ourselves at times. The barriers around us keep us from seeing and being seen. We can’t always tell if we put them up for our own protection or circumstances have trapped us with them.
At the end of an exciting, life-changing, dangerous three years of living, the followers of Jesus Christ found themselves frightened, afraid, and locked behind closed doors. Jesus was able to penetrate the barriers that they had placed between themselves and authentic living. He came to them where they were in their moment of greatest need. In that same way, He is able to penetrate the barriers that stand between us and the life — the abundant life — that God would have us live. He comes to us with grace and courage that we might truly live, now and forever more.
Joy and peace,
Ed
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