Those Moments

You know those moments when you're living "your everyday walking around life" (as the Message Bible puts it)  and God's presence, his grace, is just overwhelming? Those moments have been washing over me in waves.  Big roaring waves that knock me on my back, drown me in his love, and then recede enough that I can find my feet again.  

My fifteenth book hits the shelves this week. Amazon has had it for a couple weeks, and so far readers like the story.  Last night I sat in church with a friend and listened to the song Oceans and heard a message about "remaining in the vine."  A quiet desperation rose up inside me.  I don't ever want to wander from that vine, yet I know I will.  My humanity is ridiculously stubborn, and I can talk myself into (and out of) just about anything.  Romans 7 is way too familiar to me. (Christian will recognize the verses where Paul says something like, "I do what I don't want to do, and I don't do what I do want to do.")  So here I am today--clinging to the vine.

And yet . . . as I write that, I'm thinking, "Well, that's just stupid.  Why cling when I can abide? Why struggle to do and to be, when Christ is and has done. 

My mom used to like a song by singer Mike Adkins. That old album is long gone, but it had this lyric: "It's not in trying but in trusting." 

So today is going to be about trusting and resting in what Christ has already done. ,

I'm also going to my home church this morning, shopping for birthday gifts, cleaning bathrooms, walking the dog, working on revisions, doing a load of laundry, and stopping at Kroger. That's my everyday walking around life, and I'll be abiding as I go about the day.