Wednesday, February 14, 2007

It's cold outside, again! (Wesley e-letter)

Dear Friends,

It is amazing to me that yesterday could be so (relatively) warm and today can be so 
cold!  Weather in Kentucky can change at a moments notice.  Anyway, hope you are all 
staying warm.

Speaking of staying warm, we are giving away Warm Fuzzies at DUC today (2-4pm) and 
tomorrow (10a-2p).  I even changed my picture to a Warm Fuzzy on Facebook to commemorate 
the event.  Be sure and pick yours up!

Remember tomorrow night SOLID ROCK CAFE'.  We will be talking about "Listening to God."  Specifically, how to tell whether it's God's voice or your own.  Free food at 6:30pm.  Love to see you there.

Now for Sami's Ramblings About Jesus:

This morning before my quiet time I found some songs I had written  a couple of years ago before my oldest son was born.  As I pondered them in the quietness of God's presence, it struck me that they still spoke truth to me.  All of them were written as love songs to God.   All of them speak of the power of God's presence.  The funny thing is that they reflect those quiet, intimate moments with the Lord that are often hidden.  These aren't mountain-top moments.  They aren't blind-me-on-the-roadside moments.  They are those simple times when life is ordinary and somehow an ordinary moment belongs to Him.  And it's not even that special, as if God shows up in a noticable way.  It is that ordinary moment that is given to Him. 

I can hear in the songs the rythm of my life speaking.  In one there is so much pain.  And yet a repeating affirmation of faith answers:  You, God, are there.  In one there is that beginning awareness of God's closeness and a companion awareness of yearning to be His.  In another there is a simple trust that speaks beyond circumstance:  My heart and my life are safe in Your hands. 

Where do you hear the rythm of your life speaking? I guess this experience brought forth for me that awareness that life, at its most basic,  is a search for God, and living is being found in God.  When everything "spiritual" is stripped away (that sense of being used by Him, the pride of serving Him, the fruit or growth that comes from Him, the elation of feeling close to Him, the compulsion of having to see Him) all that's left is simply Him.  And in the grand scheme of things, that is enough.  That simple Presence is enough to order my days, our days.

Now I like spiritual fireworks better than anybody.  I like the rush of feeling God's power move through my life like a racing river.  I love seeing Him work.  I especially love being a part of His work.  Yet I find in that hunger a spiritual greed that tends to take over.  If I really had to choose, it's really His quiet closeness that I need more.  Because it's really the only thing that sustains.  Nothing else, not even the things of God, can take the place of God in our lives.

Gosh this is such a profound truth.  It's like I hate it even as I write it.  But I know it is true.
My most honest confession is, "I want the stuff of God."  Yet God is so much more satisfying, ultimately, than all His stuff.  Some spiritual guru, somewhere, sometime, said, "Seek the God of consolation rather than the consolation of God."  I'm beginning to understand more what that means.

So here's the good news in all of this.  While we cannot eat spiritual dessert all the time, we can be quite nourished and ultimately satisfied with the simplicity of just being His.  And out of all that being, our lives begin to make sense.  We begin to know peace.  We begin to know, without having to be reminded every second, who we are and whose we are.  And God's most important work is done then because no one gets to take the credit but Him.

Blessings,

Sami



Rev. Sami Wilson
Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation
1355 College St.
Bowling Green, KY 42101
(270) 842-2880

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