To seek and to slow

So I really need to be running to Target right now but my heart is about to burst and I just have to get my thoughts on paper.  Really my blog is just another form of my journal! :)

We spent Thanksgiving at the beach this year and it was glorious!  (Please don't hate me!) After five days of sunshine, the whispers of the wind off the ocean, and our favorite beach foods, coming home to routine and crazy schedules can really do a work on me.  Going from an extended rest to facing the Christmas season and all of its details and busyness send me into an overwhelmed frenzy fairly quickly.  That frazzled woman sets the tone of her home and it is not a pretty one in this state and many apologies ensued from there. But God knows my heart, my worry, and He came gently and lovingly to whisper to that frazzled perfectionist heart.  It is why I am bursting with an overflow of joy and adoration right now.  We get it all backwards don't we?  We focus on the shopping lists, the cookies, the parties, the hosting, the decorating.  And we lose the real focus.  But God has sweetly nudged me back.  By the end of day two returning home I had the treat of going with my big girls, my mom and two of my best friends to our beautiful Christmas dinner hosted by our church.  And the real treat:  Ellie Holcomb was there leading us in worship!  It was through her that God started doing His work.  (Thank you Ellie!!)  I am definitely an Ellie fan (and so are my girls), and I pretty much have every song memorized.  So to hear the stories last night of how these songs were birthed was so beautiful to me.  In her song, As Sure As the Sun, she spoke of how we worry and fret over things but we never ever fret over whether or not the sun will rise right?!  We don't have to because it always does.  That is Christ's love towards us.  She sings "as sure as the sun will rise and chase away the night, His mercy will not end." His mercy will NOT end.  His love will NOT end.

"Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; 

his going out is sure as the dawn; 

he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth."

Hosea 6:3

As someone who struggles with truly believing this with my entire heart...that He loves me despite me?  He loves me in my worst moments?  The God who created the universe, who was born to die, who works miracles...can He love this little wretched sinner really??  Oh, but He does!  Not only does He love me but He sings over me.  He sings over you.

"The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; 

he will rejoice over you with gladness; 

he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing."

Zephaniah 3:17

I needed to hear that even in my bad mommy moments, my worry, and my sin that I have a Savior who was born to rescue me.  And He went to impossible lengths to do so. God sent His son in the most humble way in a dark and dirty stable to bring LIGHT and peace to our hearts and our lives. "O, come let us adore Him!" "Fall on your knees.  O hear the angel voices.  Oh night divine! Oh night when Christ was born!!!"

This morning in Bible study God continued His quest for my heart!  Oh, how do I ever turn from this loving, compassionate God who pursues me!! We were studying the desires of Moses to know God, know His presence, and see His glory.  God delights to answer that prayer.  The part I really loved was that God knew Moses didn't need to see all of His glory (though one day he would in eternity) but that Moses needed to know the goodness of the Lord, as well as His name. He said "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'the Lord'".  Exodus 33:19.  Then in the next chapter we learn that after all of this time with the Lord and the writing of the Ten Commandments Moses comes down from the mountain face shining, radiating.  Why?  Because "he had been talking with God" (Ex. 34:29).  Our teacher this morning beautifully shared that "we become what we behold!"  "One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:  that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple....my heart says to you, 'your face, Lord do I seek." (Ps. 27:4-9) I pray that this season I behold Him and Him alone.  I pray that I seek His face and not perfection. I pray that I press on first and foremost to know the Lord.  I hope that in seeking, knowing, gazing, and dwelling I can know Him deeper and more intimately and that those fruits will be the new tone of my home and my life.

Father in Heaven, may I gaze upon Your beauty this Christmas season, not on that which will never satisfy.  May I hear the angels' voices not the sound of busyness and the world.  O come, O come Emmanuel.  Let us adore Him!  May I adore you more and more with each passing day in new and fresh ways.  Lord, it is your face I choose to seek above all else. 

Ann Voskamp writes in The Greatest Gift, "There, here, in the midst of the inconceivable, the loud claims, the hard sells, the big spectacles, Christ comes small, the micro macro-miracle who comes in the whisper and says, Seek ME...Advent, it is made of the moments.  This slow unfurling of grace."

May we slow.  May we seek.  And may we find THE most precious gift today.

Our Savior, Christ the Lord.