Done with Humdrum

So after the little love fest  of All I Ask of You and I Can’t Get Enough yesterday I had music and a happy smile all day.  I love when I wake up in the night and worship is in my head.  It makes sleeplessness easier somehow, I try to pray and fall asleep…. not sure if that says something about my prayers or if it is just the lack of worrying that makes sleep come back. Once again my desk is littered with the long thin rectangular strips I jot notes on and I had plans for this blank screen but then these lines came back.

Say you want me with you, here beside you,
anywhere you go, let me go too,
that’s all I ask of you.

And I thought again isn’t that what God wants of me? Not just the time I spend in a building at the weekend, not just the time I spend in the morning before my day starts, not just last thing at night before I drop off or in the middle of the night when I wake up.  Anywhere I go. Everywhere I go. All the places, situations, circumstances, good things, bad things or silly things I find myself in.  We quote Joshua when we have hard things ahead.

⁹ This is My command: be strong and courageous. Never be afraid or discouraged because I am your God, the Eternal One, and I will remain with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9

And boy I am glad He is with me and I don’t have to be fearful. But what about when it’s not a dangerous situation? What about the humdrum of my life when it just ticks along? I wonder if Jesus’ life ever just ‘ticked along’ or if He was always aware of God’s presence with Him?  I think we all know the answer to that. I doubt there was ever a time He wasn’t aware of the Presence that anointed Him, that empowered Him.

Jesus promised to be with us always. He promised to send a comforter, counsellor, the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit. The Israelites had to go to the Temple to be in God’s presence. I am the temple where He chooses to dwell.  It feels sometimes like I lock the door like I am not open to visitors, though. As if I am really happy to have the presence when I want it, in the times I have allocated but the rest of the time is mine and it’s by invitation only.  I’m glad those times are getting fewer – but they’re by no means the exception and it’s not that I deliberately exclude the Holy Spirit it’s that I just live the way I used to. I’m not ‘sinning’ but neither am I walking in that anointing that is mine. I’m walking with blind eyes to the suffering around me, I’m walking with closed ears to the needs, I’m shopping without thought for the people walking past me.

What a waste. What a waste of time, of opportunity.  I pray today I will be salt and light in every place I go.  I pray the presence of God will be the thing of which I am most aware.