Enjoying the Journey

Today is day four of a four day week end. The "to do list" is partially conquered, but really, there's never an end. On top of that I'm a wee bit blue and feeling unmotivated. So, I'm gifting myself a gentle kind of day - puttering here and there without time pressure. I need to be gentler to myself at times.

I'm the current STOP of a traveling book, All the Way to Heaven by Elizabeth Sherrill. I have very little time to read anything other than class materials, and I tend to spend any time I do have on my Bible study. But I'm not ready to forward this book quite yet because it really is a gem.

These quotes have made me pause as I read them just now.

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied, "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way." ~Minnie Louise Haskins

"Our hand in his is of course a poet's way of expressing trust. And why should dark be better for our journey than daylight? Because, I've come to feel, holding our hand is God's delight."

"Getting there, even to some noble goal, is not as important to God, I suspect, as the journey in companionship with him. It's relationship, not achievement, that he wants."

"It's an hour by hour, minute by minute thing, Andrew [as in Brother Andrew] said. 'God doesn't set us a task and come back later to see how we've done. He goes with us every inch of the way.' And it's along the way that the important thing happens, the creature falling in step with the Creator."

Of course I know all this in my brain. But this speaks to my heart. My "to do list" heart with the mentality that often rates a day by its productivity.

Today is not overly productive, or at least not as productive as I'd like. But I am in relationship with the One who understands the blues, knows the causes and holds the solution. I'm leaning in. I want to bring him delight - the delight of my still hand in His, even for moments at a time, is a lovely picture indeed.