Friday Five: Vital connection...

Friday Five: Vital connection...

(Dance floor)

OK I'll admit it, right now I am exhausted, there is so much going on and so much to do that I fell like I am running around in small circles, add to that the fact that there is so much that I'd like to do ....

What I need to do is give myself permission (make myself) to stop and to refocus, to breath the air and smell the roses to get perspective and to rest in God's presence, and sometimes that can be hard to achieve but I know that the harder it gets, the more essential it becomes. Somewhere deep inside I hear the Spirit whispering to my soul:

Live in me, make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself, but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined to me... (John 15: 4)


So I want to ask you

1. How do you intentionally make a vital daily connection with God? What roots you and gives you life?

I have to admit that I don't every day.  Some days I just get up and go straight to the laptop.  Some days I sleep late and lie around in bed.  There IS something about being retired... But most of the time I find that God finds me.  The important thing is that I don't run away.  It is then, in the midst of all the hustle and bustle that I just have to find a place to be quiet if it is nothing more than the bathroom.
2.  Do you have a favourite space/ place that you go to?  I don't have a "Laughing Place" here in TX yet.  I can never seem to find a place in the church I am serving.  I have often gone to a RC church or chapel.  Often here in TX it is driving out on the plains.  Right now the bluebonnets are in bloom and that is such a beautiful journey.

3. Is there a particular passage, phrase or prayer that brings you immediately into God's presence?  "Be still and know that I am God."  If it is especially trying, Ben Sirach 2. Psalm 139 generally speak.

4. Music- essential ingredient or distraction- discuss

Because I started out as a symphonic musician, classical music often speaks better than Scripture.  The Brahms Requiem, Anything by Mahler, The 2nd movment of Ravel's Piano Conceto, Anything by Rutter, If I have to be working, I don't want words to the music so I stick with instrumentals.  If I am just being quiet and I need something with inspiring words, I will often find some Gregorian chant that I know.  And sometimes it is some jazzy or hip hop thing that gets me off my duff.  Music speaks in my soul as does art.

5. Silence and solitude or engagement with like minded others?  

Actually both.  At times I really need the silence to center on God's love, to remember all the good things that God has done for me.  If I need to get out of myself and my own grief, sadness or self-possession I need to be with others who love Jesus or need to be loved by Jesus.  I need to forget myself and see Christ in others. Being and extrovert, I get energized by being with others.  Years ago after I took the Meyers-Briggs I figured out that solitude just enervated me.  But I also knew that it was in that silence that I had learned to let go of myself and listen to God.  Meditation can be done while I am driving--contemplation should not!!!