This ain't no drive-thru religion

Feast: A four-course succulent meal. Complete with: a fork(salad and dinner), spoon, knife, napkin, bread plate, water glass, wine glass, dinner plate and of course- an appetite. 

Snack: A nibble here or there of granola bar, bites of this or that, enough to eat and run.

Dear Jesus,
Do I feast on you like a satisfying meal giving me strength and satiety?
or
Do I take nibbles of your Word, sips of prayer and crumbs of attentiveness to your Spirit? 

If I were to encounter You lakeside on a beautiful sunny day like today, would my attention to you be divided and distracted? Could you count on me to pour liquid gold (my time and adoration) at your feet and not be worried over treasure lost?

ok, ok. maybe for a day or two i would rise early, stay in the hot sun, hang on your words and fall in love with you. 

but love can fade if not tended on a normal basis. i don't mean a familial kind of love where once you are blood when you always "love" someone no matter the distance or detachment. i mean the verb love. the one that is active and alive.

i would (as i now do) fall into the reliability and predictability of life. the day-to-day grind. my feet would dance in the same two-step pattern they had taken the previous 24 hours.

The answers hurt because the truth of the matter is that my months, days, and hours are spent scurrying to and fro. Not staying, not lingering. But instead, nibbling your Gospel as if peanuts can fill this ravenous whole of myself. Your love, your sacrifice is food to be devoured like a burger to a starving beggar. Because, after all, that is what I am.

"Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." John 6:54

But we have hope.

But we have hope.

All throughout God’s Word, we hear the resonant sound of hope being rung. Overall, this Hope that much of the New Testament (namely Paul’s writings) refers to is something that we will see not here on Earth, but once we are resurrected with Christ. 

“the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel” –Col1:5

But I am reminded that just as we wait expectantly, this hope is doing something beneficial in us as we wait for the Gospel to be fully realized in us. 

Just as I await the return of my husband to our home after a two and a half year absence, I know that even in the midst of this painful waiting process, God is doing a good work. So often I want to yell: “But what about in the meantime?! (July-October!)” (Take heart, Ashley) Alas, Christ is working in both my heart and my husband’s. May I wait like a bride for her husband in both aspects. Knowing that the one will only be a foretaste to actually seeing my God on That Day.

So I will not lose heart or hope in the waiting game, knowing that this “limbo” or “almost but not yet” is the anticipation to a much sweeter future than I could never imagine.

“In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. “ -Col1:6