STRUGGLES WITH SMILES

No I’m not suggesting that it isn’t normal or necessarily healthy to have some terrible crisis and one’s response is to smile or even act happy. But I am suggesting that in such times the person of faith will eventually seek the Lord’s wisdom in terms of understanding. And with such understanding comes peace as well as the simple calm of an expression of knowing.

We enter the highway of circumstance and come to so many tollbooths that tax our energies, mood and thoughts. And at times we truly don’t have the ability to have the “exact” change in terms of what is the perfect reaction. Still we can’t escape those booths no matter how hard we try.

Some people labor their whole lives to try and pretend such fares don’t bother them. They confuse maturity with being mentally or emotionally numb. If you can’t truly frown then how can you truly smile? One must honestly walk the valley in order to truly stroll the mountaintop with full appreciation.

With God we are always naked to the core with what really flows from our heart and essence. That is part of the reason I think that Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden. Because it is in part a symbol of the prefect relationship with God. One where we don’t even pretend to have secrets he doesn’t know.

I had a vision of sorts the other night. It was of the Lord. I saw a river of pure golden light. It was constantly, powerful and utterly mesmerizing to my senses. What amazed me was that despite the reality where I knew this incredibly powerful river was one I could never come close to being equal to, I had no fear of approaching it or the need to feel its equal. In that glimpse of thought there came the awareness of with God how he really isn’t looking for us in a relationship to dress it with some kind of presumptive need. The Lord is constant. He has always been and always will be. And part of true worship is the capacity to simply enjoy his glory without feeling a need in anyway to be worthy of someone changing before one can enjoy that glory.

I think in part that is what drives us at times to dress up our emotions when coming to the Lord in times of tears. And without allowing the tears to genuinely flow we simply dam up the capacity to let the smiles come later.

Can we savor the moment with the lace of memories that in faith let’s us remember that God cares enough to bring light to our shadows of misery. Only like that river, it is constantly flowing even when we are standing still. So at times it means the understanding is caught in the current and won’t reach us by our timing.

When that happens, it is the faith that is able to sit and wait upon that merciful touch to arrive that can give us strength in the midst of the sadness. Hopefully we can continue to simply bathe ourselves in the peace of enjoying the vision of the Lord’s presence without it having to take place only with the understanding takes place. We too can become a river. One less glorious, but a flow of essence fed by God’s river if we allow him the precious occasion of thought to do so.