A TASTE OF HALOS

There is something so overpowering about new experiences. It is the one time before something becomes routine that all our senses are truly alive.

And the same is true with becoming born again. Only it affects a person on more than one level when the Holy Spirit comes into one’s life for the first time. It can be so intense, so unbelievably capable of touching every corner of one’s thoughts and feelings.

I can’t speak to how the conversion experience affects people in other faiths. Since the Holy Spirit to me only applies to Christianity I have a hard time imagining spirituality without that influence ever being quite the same.

But regardless of that fact, the one thing we do all appreciate is how later, after time brings the burdens of routines in Christian life as part of our existence that same intensity cools. We still do the same things, but perhaps not with the same degree of enthusiasm.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve done something wrong. One can’t stroll the mountain-top constantly. But even in when return to planet earth, there can still be moments of “spiritual wind” that touch our lives, which revives that first time sensation.

And with it comes that sense of God’s presence. The awareness of the vastness of his host of beings he has that serve his every purpose. That doesn’t mean we end up seeing angels everywhere. But it can heighten our senses in terms of their reality.

As long as that “taste” for the eternal doesn’t translate into some presumption of seeing God or the signs of his presence in everything we do. He is there, but deciding to try and stretch reality till we find God somehow totally involved in every nook and cranny can be taxing. After all we aren’t suppose to be robots. The Lord does expect us to have minds and use them. Only to also listen with our souls.

Having a taste for halos is to reach for the inspiration from his word, in prayer and worship that flushes out palate of the craving only for this world. It is to know and rejoice that we can remind ourselves that there is more to life than living by bread alone.

But it is also to know one does need bread! That is sometimes something that gets lost in the process. We can become so consumed by thinking of haloes we forget we are also human. In eternity it won’t matter. However for the present we need to have an appetite that seeks the type of nutrition that satisfies mind, body and soul.

Perhaps in our efforts to fly we can also enjoy knowing when God is as much a part of the ordinary and that he doesn’t require us just to know and want only heaven while in this life. Balance is the joy that comes from truly listening to his wisdom without the seasoning of tainted motives to keep us from tasting what God truly wants us to consumed.