Are you ever just absolutely, undeniably re-amazed at what God is doing in your life?
I say re-amazed because I am oftentimes amazed at God’s real-time interaction with me and acknowledge all He has done for me. But sometimes, if I forget the message, or am so overwhelmed with a constant bombardment of mixed messages in this world, those ah-ha moments get silenced.
I then focus my prayer needs on where God seems silent in my life -- or where I let the noisy negative dialogue in the world overshadow the good that God is trying to communicate to me. Unless I place myself in a soundproof closet with all the lights off, I will never be in a place on a day-to-day basis where I can hear God’s constant wooing to be with Him in all things in every way.
When this happens, I picture an imaginary strainer. When I “sift through” all of the messages going through my head. Instead of trying to figure out where the messages are coming from, I imagine the strainer my mom used to use when she opened a can of fruit cocktail. She would put the strainer over a juice glass and dump the fruit cocktail into the strainer. The fruit cocktail would go into the serving bowl. Quick and easy. Another way of using that strainer is to sift. In Oregon, moisture abounds so oftentimes, when baking, I bring out the sifter/strainer to measure my dry ingredients. I shake and sift until all that is left in the strainer are the unusable little balls of ingredients. At the ocean, I have taken that strainer for the kids to play with and sift through the dry sand for precious little shells and rocks.
When my brain is overwhelmed, and God’s voice isn’t clear, and I forget the amazing revelations from other encounters in prayer, I remember the job of the sifter and sift out all the negative messages that are not of God. Many are obvious.
Then it’s time to pan for gold. That is when my spiritual directors come into the picture. Panning for gold is somewhat like the sifter without any place to let the small, seemingly insignificant nuggets get away. Using living water, we sift through all the tiny pieces of confusion, pick out the gold and let the water wash away the rest. Sometimes we bring back something I had sifted out that had more significance than I thought. Some are nuggets of new insights, but many times I am re-amazed by something that has been there all along, like tiny specks of gold sparkling in the briefest of moments.
Capturing and recapturing those amazing golden communications from God propels me to seek even more. Keep sifting. I now have good, valuable information to apply to my life on a daily basis.
Just like real gold, saving and honoring every tiny piece of golden nugget from God, makes me richer in spirit, and wisdom, kindness and compassion because I have 2 spiritual directors who sift better than Betty Crocker.
Amazing!