It’s so hot inside my
soul, I swear there are blisters on my heart.” –Rich Mullins
I
couldn’t say it better. Tension – the
storm – is a sure sign that God is at work.
It also brutalizes physical and emotional health. This sounds crazy, but there have been a
number of times in my life where I wished I could go to the hospital and sleep
in a clean, white, safe room. I have craved
it. Of course, I’ve spent some time in
the hospital in recent years and experienced the round-the-clock nurse visits,
the smells, and the not so clean white rooms and now I realize I need to revise
my fantasy. But I regress. I am just so tired, I suspect I could sleep
for a week straight. Yet the hamster
wheel in my brain churns on, and I stay up later than I should writing,
thinking, praying, trying to find an answer I’ve missed or a miracle I forgot
to claim. There are always more emails
that might be the one. More phone calls
to return. More leads to follow up on. More.
More. More.
Yet in
the last week, the message I keep getting is “worship.” The idea of worship as a way to seek the face
of God first loomed large in my life when I read Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet while I was nursing and rocking an
infant Violet. (You should read it, by
the way. Buy it now.) It was a novel idea to me back in September,
but lately I find it everywhere I turn.
The speaker at church on Sunday talked about approaching jobs that are
too big for him with physical worship. The
Rich Mullins I cranked up on my nighttime walk to me to “Sing your praise to the Lord, I could never tell you just how much good
it’s gonna do you just to sing…” Every single person in the Christmas story I am analyzing and dissecting as I write the Advent calendar responds to Jesus with unabashed worship. There's even the voice in my heart, whispering: “Worship me.
Just worship. That is all.”
It is
hard to worship when your heart wants to beg.
To worry. To problem solve. I have to mentally reign myself in every
minute or two to focus on the words I’m singing or praying. But I have asked God to show me the steps He wants
me to take, and this is my only clear directive, a directive that glows even
more brightly as I write about it. Of
course. Worship lets us see the heart of
God, and ultimately that is what I’m called to do. “Let us seek your face and not your hands,“
I sing every Sunday. But mostly I’ve
been seeking His hands.
I do need
his hands. Life has deadlines and bills and very real needs,
but the choice to put that aside and worship is, I hope, the anecdote to my
exhaustion, the way to still the hamster wheel and let my overwrought brain get some
rest. The way to carry Jesus' burden. You know, the one he describes as "light".
I hope so. I choose to obey.
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