In every scraped knee, and “mommy, my belly hurts.” In every text from states away with request for urgent prayer, and in the circumstance from a few bedroom doors down in need of urgent prayer. In every lingering chest ache, stirred up by an absent-minded comment. In every to-do list which never got started before the day was finished. In every grand plan, thwarted. In every seeming demotion.
“He is over it all,” we say often. But do we believe He is in it?
The same blood which first coursed when He was made flesh on that starry-night so many years ago, runs its course through me. Every day. Every hour. Every minute is another opportunity for His Spirit living within me to take over another part of my inner-man.
I expect to find Him in the sunrise or the rainbow or the crisp mountain morning, and He says I’m in the milk spill, and the flat tire, and the conflict of the hour. Even those things the enemy wants to claim, He sits there too.
Every stubbed toe is another whisper from Him: I want more of your heart. Makes the hard things look a lot different, doesn’t it?
To lock arms with Him while He works to redeem our insides means we turn from the inner-grumble, the green eye of envy at another’s advancement while we wait in the wings, and we stare hard at the Son.
Adoration. It detoxifies. Cleanses. Replaces the bad bacteria with good growth. It says: God is in my everything, not just God is over my everything.
If you can’t look from yesterday to today and see a place where your heart grew in Him, plant a stake in the ground and declare this day new. Declare this to be the day you will see Him as God in my everything.
And, if these are the posts you typically skip or skim, might I suggest there is no better time to inhale Him and exhale adoration than today? He has moments of yours to win.
Thank God for Mondays.
(Each Monday, the column of 
adoration to the right-side of my blog moves front-and-center, here, and I invite others who are doing the same — stretching their heart to lift God’s Word up and back to Him, despite every obstacle the day presents — to add their link below in the comments section. You can link people back here from your post by grabbing the code on the right side of my blog. If you don’t have a blog but are, yourself, a lover of words and of God and of God’s word, feel free to add an adoration of your own in the comment section. Whether there is one of us or one hundred — and even if the words are written “merely” on our hearts — we will give Him the praise** He’s due.)
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For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9***
I live on 1/1000 of my inheritance, or even less. Can I even imagine all the riches-of-Spirit you intend for me when I consider that they required your Son’s very life to obtain?
What does it say to you when I assume that I’ve arrived and, from Your perspective, I’ve only had one drop of You on my tongue?
Father of the cattle on one thousand hills, You gave something so much more than cattle so that I might know love.
I’m undone. This very notion is so foreign to my transactional nature. I expect to win You to my works, yet You point to Your Son and say “live out of what was already done.”
Your Son is my starting point and His poverty, my wealth. Oh, God, You have set up a paradigm of Your kingdom so very other.
I adore You, God-not-made-of-flesh, who wore flesh, to win my flesh to glory.
To not walk in this wealth of spiritual blessing is a demonstration that I haven’t looked deeply into Your poverty. I know not the cross, though I speak of it often. You promise me every spiritual blessing which was wrapped up in Him, and I’m yet to taste barely any of it. Oh Father, the wealth of Your person and Your Godhead is mine to traverse.
I worship You for putting me on a path that I start, here, in flesh and through which I will walk for the rest of eternity. My knowing You has only just begun. I thank You for Your patience with my practice.
I am pauper yet princess because of You, the one they wanted to make king who escaped to the mountain just before His inauguration on the cross.
What is this beautiful love?
I admit I know not of it. I confess my destitute understanding. And Your cross shows me that You sit, not disappointed — but You see my lack and You beckon. What I am not does not disqualify me, but it’s fuel for You.
What a glorious exchange.
I love the way You love me.
My lack does not threaten You, it calls to You. You hear my poverty through the lens of Your rich substance. And I am safe being “not” because I was meant for this exchange and what is absent in me only means more of You.
**I absolutely treasure your stories. I love the memorials coming my way. What’s being erected over your lives is fuel in mine: He is good. With a life of four-being-restored and two of us not too far ahead of them, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to respond to every email, message and comment. Though the demands under my roof may not allow much time to respond to these, please know I am honored by what you’ve sent me and the time you took to tell me your story. They are gifts to me.
***For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit).
First photo compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography. Second photo compliments of Mandie Joy.
