I think God is like a kaleidoscope. God is unchanging, but we’re standing on the image we see. One day we wake up and find that God has shifted the image. Everything looks different. The world looks different. The world seems new. The trick is learning how to recognize that all the old colors are still there. It’s just the patterns that have changed.
Eileen (Tables In the Wilderness by Preston Yancey)
This quote was hard for me to read, but also the best thing that I have heard in a long time. Lately, I have not heard from God in a while. It has been a silent period. I do not understand it, but it just happened. It has become a time where I am learning to trust. It’s hard, very hard. Some days it feels like you are so far away from Him. It’s depressing. Some days there is excitement. It’s still silent though.
I have come to almost enjoy the silence though (don’t get me wrong I obviously long to hear God’s voice again). It has taught me many lessons. In silence, you begin to learn a sort of longing that is truly beautiful. I have begun to see that in longing there is hope. There is hope that, one day, there will be an end to the silence.
Thomas Merton wrote, “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” I don’t know what is going on most of the time. I don’t think I ever will. I am learning to trust though. In trusting, I am learning that if you live in the moment and seek God in that moment you are doing exactly what he asks of you. He is always there, in the silence, the screaming, the quiet, and the loud. When times change, we cannot forget that he doesn’t. He never changes. He’s always there.
Our culture has taught us to live for the future. We are always on to the next thing. I’m going to college in a few months and the only thing I want is for people to let me live in the now, because God is in the now. He is moving right now. He’ll still be moving in a few months too, so why not live every moment that I have moving with Him right here and now. What’s the rush? So, I ask in this tough time in my life that you would join me, wherever you might be, in living now. There is so much happening in this moment. God is moving and that is the only things that matters. We’ve just got to look for it, because heaven is all around.