becoming.

I'm feeling a little bit like someone dug a hole in the sand and then shoved me in and covered me up to my shoulders. 

Spiritually, I mean. 

I don't feel distant from God, but I don't feel near to him either. I just feel stuck. I don't have the sense I used to have that his presence is permeating everything I'm doing. I sure think about him a lot, and I keep hoping that the focus of my thoughts and my conversations will become the focus of my heart too. Life's been weird in a lot of ways the last two and a half years, and I keep wondering and waiting and working to feel the connection I used to feel. I wasn't sensing any change, as I usually don't when I try to change myself by my own power. 

So I started reading books. And I started thinking about the kinds of things I am actually waiting for. And I started thinking more about why I can't seem to match that two-years-ago feeling. None of those things alone answered my questions, but I'm coming to understand something more about the character of God through all of it, and perfectly, beautifully, not-coincidentally, the things I'm learning about God's character are the exact things I have been waiting for.

Newness.

Transformation.

Becoming.

The faith I was committed to two and half years ago was rooted in newness. That's exactly why it felt so strong. Every day I was experiencing something new about following Jesus, and so every day presented new spaces to enter into God's grace.

Maybe this is a bold statement, but I believe it: God's grace is his defining characteristic. Grace doesn't mean forgetting, it means remembering but casting aside. It means East-to-West forgiveness, separating us completely from the old and worn and sinful and giving us newness that begins below and radiates up and out. The process of becoming something new is life-long and daily. Unless I can let go of the Jesus I knew two and a half years ago and see him in newness today, with the refined truth and goodness I now have to hold, I can't experience that piece of who he is. 

I have to re-learn who God is every day. Not because he is changing, but because I am, and because his character is so vast I cannot possibly contain it in its entirety.

What if we treated each day as a million opportunities to know God more intimately? What if we saw the morning as a sunrise, a starting over, a chance to look at the way forward towards God with more knowledge than the day before, but with a faith held by tiny roots that must be tended and strengthened? How differently would we see ourselves in the context of Christ, and how much more self-grace would we practice?

Maybe child-like faith means fresh eyes and careful steps, and maybe new mercies means organic grace and relationship with Jesus defined not by "more and more" but by "new and newer".

So tomorrow and the next day and the next day after that, I will look down the road and see him coming, and I will take those careful, tender steps towards him, with anticipation that my faith cannot stay the same. Because Jesus is not about stagnant resurfacing-- he is about continual becoming, methodical, day-by-day, perseverant renewal and cyclical refreshment.

I am so in love with the process of transformation.

I don't have the luxury of free time today to reeaally reflect on this. But these words were FIGHTING their way out after a weekend saturated with deep relationship, community around the table, & worship around a campfire under the stars.

God is good.