Just One Thing

I have been pondering many things over the past couple years as I have battled stage four breast cancer. This diagnosis came along and ripped my world apart. Nothing stayed the same and even now every day is different. This sounds horrible and like a complaint but it’s not, it’s a praise. I have been given a gift in the midst of the storm that has anchored me in a way I never knew was possible.

Of course I would prefer not to be dealing with cancer but I am so beyond thankful for the blessing it has brought into my life. Everything I thought I knew, everything I thought was important and more vitally everything I valued as “the way” I was supposed to live my life was torn away and I was left with just one thing.

So often we live our lives from a place of our own understanding and we miss the only thing that matters. In looking back I can see how I did this very thing for decades of my life. Yes a large part of my busy life was my job, it was hugely stressful, never ending and fast paced ( super sonic paced is more like it). I found it easy to blame circumstances but in truth I chose to let my life be crammed with stuff; if it wasn’t work, it was church, family activity, projects etc..etc…etc. Honestly looking back I know that it was only God’s grace that kept me through all that self inflicted chaos.

What I have been realizing is that I allowed a damaging pattern to build in my life. Yes, the enemy helped by throwing things my way but at the end of the day I am the one who allowed them to stick. I believe in hard work but what I see now is that I allowed that to become an idol in my life, an unhealthy focus on doing something and what’s worse is that I was convinced it was part of what faith meant. Read the Bible more, attend more groups, pray more, find your ministry/calling, on and on.

Don’t misunderstand reading your Bible, praying, fellowship, service etc are all good things but I think we go about them backwards sometimes. It’s as if faith is an hourglass where all the sand has passed through and is resting in the bottom and instead of simply turning the glass over we are living our lives by shaking the hourglass trying to get sand back into the top.

So how do we change this image? We stop.. stop racing, stop doing, stop focusing on how busy we are or should be. We stop focusing on all the things and go back to just one thing. Being with Jesus. When God created Eden it was a place of relationship, where He could come and dwell with us. God didn’t even require us to seek Him, He came to us. All we had to do was sit in His presence, to dwell with Him. In the past two years everything I thought was an important part of my faith and living my life for God fell away and I am the richer for it. I have learned that my calling is to do just one thing.. dwell with Him. Out of that intimacy He reaches and turns the hourglass and things flow naturally through. It is all about just one thing.