I Need to be Reminded...

About two weeks ago, as I was walking to my desk in my office, I paused in front of a bookshelf and began perusing across a shelf. My eyes stopped on a particular book (The Reflective Life: Becoming More Spiritually Sensitive to the Everyday Moments of Life by Ken Gire). I picked up. It’s a book I read about seven years ago, yet I immediately felt compelled to read it again.

It’s always interesting to read something again with a gap of several years in between. To notice the comments you made in the margin, to slowly read the underlined parts and then reflect on where you were at during that season of your life. On a number of occasion while doing this I’ve had the thought, “Man… I was so clueless back then…” Often, after these little epiphanies I wonder, “In a few years from now, what will be the things I’ll look back on this very season I’m in right now and say the same thing?” Humbling thought.

C.S. Lewis once said, "We need to be reminded more than instructed." For me, the essence of this book is one of those core components of living that God is always trying to remind me of.

I am a creative dreamer. I feel the rush of adrenaline as I’m a part of doing something bigger than myself – something that requires God to come and save the day, as it were. I’ve realized that in the midst of the rush of pursuing God given dreams, I can become unaware of God’s presence in the bringing of the dreams to actualization. This has been very convicting to me. As such, one of my life ambitions is to be more fully present. To live a life that has space for reflection and awareness of God’s present activity in it.

It seems that one of my life messages and a personal longing is for a life that is growing in such sensitivity and awareness. I am learning that one of the greatest moments I can give to God and another is my present attention and growing awareness. I am yearning to live this fast paced life interrupted frequently by sacred moments of slow-motion.

“Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call,
a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by.
Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence,
a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.”
(Thomas Kelly in A Testament of Devotion)