Lenten Waiting

Stay low.

Come deeper.

For the last few days I have sensed the Spirit close to me. Burning inside me, pulling and tugging at things I don’t recognize or understand.

I keep hearing the phrases I opened this entry with, and other things very similar.

I have no idea where this is headed, but sense it’s important.

I had a powerful picture yesterday as I was on the train going home. It pulled together some things spoken and prayed over me in the last while. I saw myself laid out before God, in that sort of prayer position you see in pictures of Muslims praying. Kneeling, but with my face on the ground and my arms outstretched in front of me, palms up, open and waiting to be filled. And over me, shielding me, was the hand of God, curved, as if to cover and protect me from any harm.

My heart strings seem irretrievably tied to the calendar of the church. God has often chosen to work in me during periods typically set aside by the church calendar as times of waiting, anticipation, and preparation. I’ve written here before about the sense of pregnant expectation attached to these times in my life. Maybe it’s the history major in me, or maybe the church really had some divine guidance when they established the calendar of the liturgy all those years ago.

Lent seems to be a time of this sort of waiting and expectation for me again this year.

I’m praying that the voice of God will capture me with it’s clarity and direction. That I will be pulled ever deeper, ever lower, into the heart of the Father.

I’m anticipating the times of closeness gleaned from fasting, from watching the “diet” of things I take into myself.

I’m excited to see what He is doing. I feel something new being birthed once again.

Abba, I belong to You.

Show me where You’re working and how I can join You.