We finally have winter. The trees are hung heavy with snow, and tonight is for tea and thought and rest. It feels…bookish, but there is so much to do. My brain gets dizzy thinking of it, added to the dishes that always need washing and children that always need bathing and laundry that always needs…well, laundering…and…and…I’m out of coherent words.

This calls for ice cream.

My bowl of vanilla is heaped with extra cinnamon, and I’m under a blanket, under a cat, and under a few deadlines – both self-imposed and otherwise – and eating ice cream for dinner is the most productive way to procrastinate that I can think of without leaving the couch again. Snort.

I’ve been reading this book. Just a tiny thing, my copy is just over 100 pages, but it goes in small chunks that fill you immediately. Like lembas bread, for us literary types.

While sharing bites of ice cream with the cat, I read this:

God…has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take up with a little sensible devotion which passes in a moment. Blind as we are, we hinder God and stop the current of His graces.  

I have to read it a couple of times to take it all in. Sophie swipes at the spoon hanging in midair while I mull it over, wondering if I’ve hindered His current lately by settling for less than He wanted to give. So much is at stake in His flowing through us.

But when He finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, He pours into it His graces and favors plentifully; there they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance.

A soul penetrated with lively faith is a trust in Him that stirs the waters. The peace in our spirit is directly proportional to the wild activity of our faith.

We have plenty of wild activity around here – what we need is to channel it to the right current so it will actually produce something other than unrest.

…not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back. But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. If the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the Lord, who reposes in it, and He will quickly calm the sea.

– Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

He’s been trying to tell me something: The more audacious your faith is, Love, the more settled your spirit will be. 

There goes that comfort zone again. Bye-bye, ciao, adios…

As our faith becomes more radical, our spirit grows more resolved, rested, peaceful. We believe Him wildly and are moved with speed by the current of His grace, while our spirit is becalmed, even in the midst of storm. Our spirit only finds rest when our faith is on the move.

We need not, when abed, to lie awake to talk with God; He can visit us while we sleep, and cause us then to hear His voice. Our heart oft-times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by works, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake.

– John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

He showed me this months ago, elsewhere. He’s reminding me again that this new season isn’t about me, either. It’s not about what I can do. It’s about what He does.

Not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back…But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. Deadlines are met. Children are bathed, books are read. And things actually get done.

Maybe…even the dishes.

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* This is an excerpt from Oh My Soul: Encountering God in Honest, Unconventional (and Sometimes Messy) Prayer. You can find it on Amazon and everywhere books are sold.