Time to Receive

I went to work on the bus today
on a Friday...?
drove past a house today, one that sticks out like a sore thumb.
it’s the one where the front garden is just one massive trench!
and it’s been like that for the last ……5 years, in fact it might even be more!
the house where the front garden is a construction site.
a work in progress
just the same work still going on year after year
seems to the casual observer that nothing much seems to happen
no great excavations
no great landscaping
no great planting
just laying those foundations

Year after year
digging away……
and so often that can be our experience in life
nothing much changes
nothing really occurs
unlike a soap-oprea, where everything happens
most days are just mundane
just the same things going on year after year
perhaps livened up with a life changing, “suddenly”
and here is the big trap of living by our mind and emotions
we think that if there is no “suddenly”
Then God must have fallen asleep
and he is sleeping there waiting for us to wake him up.

We convince ourselves that God needs waking
We convince ourselves that God needs to come and visit us
and its our job to get him to move
But God is not stuck!
God is not asleep
God is resting in the finished work of his Son.
God has poured out his spirit on all flesh
God has acted
God says “It is finished.”
We look for a “suddenly,”
God says look to Christ.

We cry out to God to move
He says, “It is finished!”
He says, “It is your turn to move, it is your turn to receive.”
It is us who are stuck
It is us who are asleep
It is us who have the risen Christ living inside.
God has poured out his spirit into our hearts
Instead of asking, its time to receive
to awaken ourselves to all Christ has won and given us
to awaken ourselves to the finished work of the cross
to live in an awareness of the fullness of Christ living inside.