Monday 23 July 2007

Awakening












Well I'm just back from France chillaxed to the max. I am all set for the stress of working life now that I have indulged myself on daily seafood, vino and sunshine. Going to work in a skirt is never quite as painful when your legs are not like milk bottles!



We were staying in Saint Jean de Monts, I highly recommend a visit there sometime. Its in the Von Die region and there is lots of beautiful places to go see. Family got on well apart from the obvious bit of tension.
While I was away I kept singing that song "beautiful one" over and over in my head. It actually started to annoy me. It sort of reminded me of when the telly tubbies first came out and I couldn't stop humming the tune...out of control...La La and Po....



I actually remembered that I wrote an entry in my journal last year about that song (not the La La and Po one!). It was when we were on a retreat in Rathlin Island for a meditation day. That sounds like geekitis I know but this is one of the things I scribbled in my book that day.

For those fortunate enough not to have a brain like a christian duke box here are some of the the words..

Beautiful one I love
Beautiful one I adore
Beautiful one my soul must sing
You have opened my eyes to your wonders anew
You've captured my heart with this love
Because nothing on earth is as beautiful as you...
The beauty of you majesty awakes my soul to sing
How wonderful, how beautiful you are


The beauty of God is breath taking but our eyes often miss it. We are out of focus.
When we focus the lens of our soul by fine tuning our relationship with him...we begin to see. We can suddenly see God in the ordinary. Our eyes open even more and our field of vision widens.

When we catch a glimpse of this beauty our souls are awakened. No amount of self motivation can achieve this freedom. Its Christ inside us, the whisper of hope, of glory.

His beauty begins to radiate through us. Our faces, our hands, our lives.
People notice it, stand to their feet and gaze up.

That's why we are here, to make people look at Jesus not us. When its all about us we make presumptions that are probably false. If we see Jesus in each other there can only be truth and love.

So God opens our eyes, we see his beauty and we are awakened!

Awakened for what? Whats the point in waking up to lounge around? What are we spending our awakening on? Are we allowing this energy to reach the surface and become a living, walking, breathing resurrected Jesus?
His beauty awakes our hearts to sing. What does it mean to sing?

Sometimes its just as shallow as our lungs.
But the song of the Lord, the song within is deeper than just flesh. It's the reason we were created.

Sometimes though the well has been stopped and we become numb in spirit. We loose the ear to hear and the voice to worship. Not just a sing song but the song of our lives radiating his beauty to the broken, cups of water to the thirsty.


We no longer make a song and dance about ourselves but about this mystery.
Nothing on earth that impresses us can come close to the beauty of God. Yet how often do we forget to look for him in the things we see. When we get a glimpse we cannot stop the song escaping our lips, our hearts, our lives. ( A bit like that stupid telly tubby tune...flip sake now its in my head!)


Hope this reminds you, as it has me, not to waste those little moments of awakening.


Oh and about the line "whats the point in wakening to lounge around"...well I have done it in a physical sense for 2 weeks solid and it ain't all bad!









6 comments:

  1. Looks gorgeous...
    All the best as you hit CAH ... as a junior doctor... woohoooo!!!

    :-) Nina

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  2. hello Joy - It's Jill your 'old' camp cousellor - how controversal would it be if those apostrophes were on the next word. I just noticed that! This is my second time trying to write a comment but commputer said "no" so i'm just going to post this and then i'll finish off in another comment ... here goes ...

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  3. hi again, no i lost you for a while - i think i wrote too much so i'm sending it now in three bite size pieces - i hope that's ok. Lovely to read what your at and you have given me plenty to think about - would it be inappropriate to mention at this point that virgin vie are doing TRIPLE hostess points during August!!

    I heard a talk once on the well worn verse "(wo)man looks on the outward appearence while God looks on the heart" and how we sometimes consider the full verse ie that (wo)man does look on the outward appearence. To me it always sounded like a judgement but now i'm wondering it is just a biblical observation? Also God's pupose for Esther - get yourself gorgeous and you need to spend months doing it (Was she really so ugly? - i mean MONTHS!)- so that she would be noticed by the king and be in the right place "for such a time as this". Is it more about our priorites and perspective - "whether i have little or plenty i am content in all things" that is a challenge, that could be a yardstick whether we can use products or whether they use us!

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  4. In case anyone hasn't been to a Virgin Vie party recently a rule of thumb is to change your mascara every six months and remember to wash our make up sponges and brushes regularly(bacteria breeders!). Men don't feel left out book your own Virgin 'He' party - great fun especially at Christmas where you can sample all the products and shop from the sofa. Joy has my details. I'll pop in again Joy. God bless you x jill x

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  5. Jill I see what your doing here...good advertising strategy. The virgin he party??!...Interesting!

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  6. I don't think you could have legs like milk bottles unless you bleached them.

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