Timers

This morning I started with the Augustine devotional. It was powerful, about the imagery of Jesus as valley of tears and beautiful mountain top. No human can ascend without a descent first. The devotion was more prayerful, but still distant.

In the Lectio Divina I left my voice recorder at work yesterday, and so did it the old fashioned way. It was good, but I a tough time with the contemplative piece. I set a 5-minute sand timer to encourage at least some amount of time being spent meditatively. But, my life is filled with these timers. Timers of "conventional wisdom." At work it is deadlines for projects. The message is that the appearance of efficiency is king. It's always about building trust or tearing down misperceptions. And I struggle. There's no substance. Ian, my professor for this course, talked about time as simply a means to mark change. And so we set deadlines for getting degrees, a house, married, while others set them for us. There is a dance of expectations and then we presume to know the mind of God; for me that he is continually angry with a lack of progress. The "you could have been somewhere, but your not," syndrome. We set them for physical fitness and other disciplines. And it feels so artificial. Perhaps because in so many ways the assessment of success in these areas would not be positive. Perhaps because accountability isn't supposed to be fun.

And yet, I felt like God was honored in my 5-minute time commitment. Ironically within a few minutes of contemplating, I had some really neat ideas, thoughts from the Lord, but I can't think of them now. It's ironic because I stopped the contemplative section to write them down before I forgot.