Happy Easter everyone!
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
And He powered me through a Lent of blogging every day. Well the intent was every day, the execution was almost every day. We only missed a few.
I’ve been reflecting a lot about this blogging journey over this Easter weekend. God has opened my ears and heart to Him and my community so much over the past 40 days or so. He’s reminded me of how beautiful humility and vulnerability are, and how expansive His love truly is. He’s pointed out lies that I’ve succumbed to, and fears I live by. He has shown me how wonderful my community is. But mostly, He has showered me with a love I could never dream of, and cannot describe.
I can safely say that I have yet to regret listening to God when I feel Him encouraging me to do something.
This morning at church, our pastor spoke on the importance of realizing that we have already been given everything we need for the life God has called us to live. We often subscribe to fears and doubts that we need something more, but these thoughts lead us to disregard what happened on Easter Sunday. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this. This feeling of “this is enough” is something I have been trying to make myself have for awhile. But I have not been able to shake the desires of wanting more, so part of me settled into them and decided they were there for a reason. I felt like I needed to keep searching for what else God had, and I couldn’t find it.
You probably see where this is going.
A few hours after church, I had to drive my brother back to school, and so had 4 hours where I was just in the car. The song “All I Have” by Mat Kearney came on, and all of a sudden I overwhelmingly felt that the lyrics were actually God talking to me.
All I have
All I have
All I have
Well, you know it’s yours
Every breathe
Every step
Every moment
I’m looking for
All I have
All I have
All I have
Is yours
And you watch my heart break a little bit more
My heart break a little bit more
I’m listening to these words and driving through a really beautiful expanse of rolling hills and colorful trees. [For those of you who don’t know, I truly love driving through Indiana. I love both rolling hills and open fields of farmland where you can see for miles.] And for some reason, I just know in my heart that this is God telling me how He feels when my searching is founded in doubt rather than a desire to know Him more. When my motives are driven by fear and doubt, I never end up at the Lord; I end up clenching whatever in my life I can control and not letting go. And then I panic as I watch things unravel in the opposite way I told them to.
When we tell ourselves that God has given us everything we need, I don’t think we always comprehend that it means God has literally given us everything. I think we hear “everything we need” and we fear that it means day old bread, lukewarm water, and last season’s clothes. It’s easy to brush it off and say “I know, I know, ‘I can do all things in God who gives me strength’ yeah I’ve read that great verse but now I need to go get these things done so I can have more.” But God isn’t saying, “I have a crust of bread for you.” He is saying, “I made this world for you. I prepared this world so that when I made you, you could enjoy it. Stop searching the world and instead be in the world. If you would just be here, you would have Me.”
I’m really terrible at that. I’m always looking for ways to make things better. But God has already made things as perfectly and as beautifully as possible. I’m not called to improve what He did, but rather to embrace it. And Easter Sunday especially, thinking about the resurrection and the implications of “He is risen,” is a great time to start realizing that God’s “everything” is not minimalist, but instead encompasses much more than we can ever fathom.