Sacred Ground Ministries

Good week, bad week.

Good day, bad day.

The up and down nature of life can be disorienting. Much of this is of course unavoidable but some is brought on by myself. I come to the end of the day and realize the negative feelings of the day were self inflicted. This makes me ask, what’s happening in my heart?

What’s happening in my heart is sometimes a hard question for me to answer. I am often in my head, thinking, planning, questioning, and disconnected with my heart. Thinking comes more natural to me than feeling. This is not my tragic fall, but it certainly does work against me from time to time. This character trait comes to bear during those bad days or weeks when nothing has necessarily gone wrong but I am convinced it has. I wrack my brain for the root cause, picking up each relationship and sphere of my life and looking it over for any issues. I am convinced that with enough mental energy, anything can be dealt with.

It has become clear to me (and probably to you, as well) that my default reaction to sensing discontent is to look outward, to externalzie and rationalize. Yet looking outward only helps me continue avoiding the internal chaos, the voice within me asking me to just sit down and look, listen, and pray for a while. What is happening is disconnection from God and myself. I so easily become unfettered and anchorless.

I took a couple of hours to read my Bible and journal in the hopes of discerning some things. I came across a familiar passage of scripture from the book of Ephesians. This prayer that Paul prayed for those he loved who maybe were a little like me and needed reminded to consider the heart rang so true to what I have been experiencing.

“…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19

This passage speaks to what my hungry heart needs. It doesn’t need more mentalizing or more figuring it out. It needs more awareness of the love God, an awareness that is rich enough to span my distracted heart like strong tree roots. My heart needs comprehension that surpasses my feeble and useless attempt at knowledge. After the sheer exhaustion of over-thinking that is based in my own knowledge and wisdom, there is love, spanning the breadth, length, height, and depth of my shallowness, inviting me to be rooted and grounded.

Lovingly,