Pomegranate blossoms on the sidewalk.

Everyone will stand in awe and declare God’s deeds; they will recognize His works. Psalm 64:9

Yesterday Gary talked about the Psychology Today article again, the one about awe and happiness. Wonder produces joy. As in Everette marveling over all the pomegranate blossoms littering the sidewalks of Tucson. Everette love pomegranates because they are so juicy. This is what it means to come unto Him as a child.

The key to happiness is to have a smaller self.

And my early morning meditation verse yesterday was the one about the deer longing for the water brooks. And the question Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? and why are you so disquieted within me?

And Gary had an answer: Discipleship begins with the understanding of our identity as the beloved child of God. Unearned, unmerited, but because He is love, and we are His handiwork.

True spirituality is seeking what the heart longs for. Nothing else but Him will fill that hole.

Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and burden is light.  Matthew 11:28-30

And Gary described this yoke as a sort of training yoke, the sort of thing an Indiana farm boy would know about. And the little ox is strapped to the big ox, and He leads, and we follow.

And Gary offered a different sort of map of where we are going, the two of us, how we are going through each day. The continual conversation with Him is not so much about my future and my work and my breakfast cereal and my parking lot place, but rather it is about those moments of meeting with others. How Jesus walks through the crowd noticing, pausing, looking up, stopping.

Stopping with tenderness in his eyes. What would you have me to do?

Dear LORD today may that be my map, Your children, the oh so many images of God I will meet today.

May I recognize Your works. And be filled with awe.

And declare Your deeds. 

And by the way, thank You for the four new red roses by the front door.

Are you willing for every stone to be turned over in your soul?

“Yet not what I will, but what You will.” Mark 14:36

Contemplation:  First of all, our proud self must be broken. Our own self must give up its rights. Our self is hard. It does not want to obey God. It likes to show that it is right. The self must bow to God’s will. It must confess that it is wrong. It must give up its own way. It must give up all its glory. Only in this way can the Lord Jesus have all and be all in our lives. We must die to self.

We look to Christ, who did not give himself to the approval of men, but entrusted himself to the Father.

During Lent, we are trying to make room in our lives for God to shed some light. God will shed light into the dark corners, but that kind of light can only be received with humility. Hession puts it this way: “The man who knows, day by day, the meaning of brokenness is the man who humbly agrees to what God shows him about himself.”

Well, if the purpose of this sabbatical was to refresh my relationship with God and break my Proud Little Self, there was no better plan of action that to return to the middle school classroom. God bless middle school teachers.

Self must obey God to love these little ones… and not to quote a coworker, “punch them in their little faces.” Self is challenged and questioned and threatened at every turn. Self must kneel gently by the side of yet another slightly trembling child shaking his head in front of a blank sheet of paper. Self points out to Self a continuous stream of not-quite-right responses to the flood of decisions that must be made minute after minute, hour after hour of shifting and readjusting even the most simple of lesson plans. And something else, not a single student smiled, “Thank you, Mrs. Voelkel,” as she made her way out the door. I am actually quite sure that not a single one of those 150 backpack bound bodies remembers what my name is.

And Hard Self will soften in the foundries of hurting confused overwhelmed lost angry lonely rejected failing frustrated thirteen-year-olds.

Oh yes, my eyes will be fixed on Christ.

Yes, Lord, shed light in my dark corners.

Break me.

I trust my Self into your tender hands, to be broken and offered up to the multitudes. That they might be filled.