Like Lightning

Have you ever had clarity strike you like lightning?

My days lately have been contrasts of Lightning and dull overcast greys...

I love when Jesus tells us to come we who are weary. Weary in our souls. He says to take up his burden and his yoke- for they are easy and light.

I feel like I've read and spoken these words a trillion times- but today his words have the illuminating clarity of lightning when it lights your retinas across the skyline.


I've been so encouraged, that even here where I live in Missouri- beyond the Christian culture and the religion- I've seen His hand at work in others' lives. And while I dont really fully realize why Im where I am- and life can send my world in a lazy, apathetic spiral downwards- he hears me when I pray. Even when I dont, too. And this is funny, I think because so many people who say prayer is conversation with God never stop to realize it is not only prayer- it is everything, all the time which God hears and responds to. His grace is sufficient. Somehow, it is.

I dont really feel like im writing this right now. But here it is. God is real. Jesus is real. REAL. Real like your car or your bank account. Real like your reaction thoughts in your head- clearer, brighter- with more substance than we in all our experience and learning and thought perception can say. But he reaches down into our lives and ways- and shows us, beckons us higher up and deeper in. To life. LIFE. Real life- life that means more, goes deeper, feels better, is bigger. And he loves us- deeper than what our own tired old sayings and old Christian mantras could ever tell. And this is good. GOOD. Very Good. In fact, it's best. Because if we could sum up all God was we would have a perfect religion- and those are some of the worst things in history. God (and us, if we'd only realize) wants perfectly complete, whole, glowing, healed people- like you and I for a higher life which is crashing in around us each moment we help bring a little of the Kingdom of Heaven right here to our quiet corners of the world.

We need to learn to value and treasure not power but service- not justification but implicit holiness- not better, but humbly broken. A life which is not mighty but given wholly to Jesus' way wherever we go, wherever we are- whomever we are. It is not our individuality which unites us- it is Jesus. And while I dont know much about the guy, Im willing to try. To want to want. And he hears our prayers- whether we kneel in a church or sigh after work. And he knows the plans he has for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us. Plans to give us HOPE and a Future.

And oddly enough, that's good enough for me.



Like what you read? Join in with your own insights, stories and art- send them to ryanpfreeman1@aol.com. Thanks and God bless -Ryan