Moving to God’s Timing | Slow Devotion
I am beginning a journey, a slow devotion to God and to Jesus Christ. I don’t know where I’m going, really. I guess that is the thing about having faith that I’m still learning: not all of the steps are easily known, not all of the paths fully illuminated upon the outset.
But still, I am beginning this journey.
I’ve been struggling with it. There’s a silence over my being right now that is difficult to surmount. I want to pray, I want to praise loudly, I want to lift my hands up wide — but there is something in me still that holds back. I can feel it now, I don’t know how to describe the sensation. It almost feels like a cool compress, that one might put on when one has a fever.
I have considered that maybe its God wanting me to experience the silence of peace, the wholesomeness of a comfortable silence. I am so quick to see things about me as negative that it takes a moment to consider how it might in fact be a blessing.
There’s something else I’ve been struggling with. My previous spiritual path was dominated by veneration of nature and the earth, and with it the personification of Mother Earth, Gaia. I had never been big on deity worship before — this journey with God and my previous experiences with Christianity are the outlier to this fact. But I still held reverence for the natural splendor around me and exalted the celebration of the seasons and natural tides.
This hasn’t gone away, but instead has evolved into an unceasing wonder at the masterful creativity of God. All around me is beauty and blessing and I find myself amazed and grateful every day that I get to experience it. I just don’t quite know yet how to show all of these positive feelings to God.
But that is the thing about a slow devotion. It is submissive and yielding to God. It is honest without being boastful. It is gentle but moving firmly in the right direction. And most importantly, it is moving at a pace that I know I can sustain.
So maybe I don’t know everything yet about how to behave. Maybe I haven’t mastered prayer yet and I don’t know how to fully sit with Jesus and be present. I have accepted Jesus as my lord and savior, but I don’t quite know what a savior is yet and I still have questions — and that’s okay too.
I want a lifetime with the Lord. I want a spiritual journey that is nourishing and joyful. God wants me to come as I am, so that is what I’m going to do, each footfall into a road I cannot quite see tempered by faith and a willingness to surrender to the flow of the Most High.
