Fully Alive!

For the Retreat in Daily Life, we are finishing week 2 and getting ready to start week 3. The first five weeks are preparatory weeks and I believe this is to get us ready for the weeks that follow. This exercise will be following the church calendar so we will be going through Advent and Lent at those time, which should be good! Anyway, this weeks theme has been My creaturely dependence on God who creates me, yet continues to give God's self to me. This is not in past tense, it's present. So God created me and gives himself to me, dare I say daily? Does this mean that God is still working on me? Let me make that a little broader...still working on us? I'm going to say a big yes to this. I'm also going out on a limb by saying I bet it happens on more days than just Sunday, what do you think? 


Sister Rachel gave us this hand out last week that she told us to look at outside of our prayer time. I wanted to share one of them with you, cuz, well I don't know, just to give me something to talk about I guess.


If I grow to be the person God has been hoping I would become, I manifest God's power at work, God's glory. For the glory of God is a human person fully alive. If I know who God is and who I am, and I live out that knowledge, I will praise God in the morning and thank God in the night, and intend to fulfill God's hopes for myself and for my life.


Are we growing into the person that God is hoping we will? Does this happen by a certain age? I think not. I use to think it did and by the time you got out of the house and on your own, you were set. I look back at that now and just about fall out of the chair laughing at myself and thanking God that he gave me two really cool parents that have great sense's of humor! 


Now, some 25 to 30 years later, I can say with humility that I am just now getting it together. I am understanding that my whole life is practice for what is to come in heaven. That might be why God wants us to life lives that are fully alive. We are to run through sprinklers and sing in the rain! Open doors for each other and say Thank You and Your Welcome! Look into each others eye's and really hear what is being said. We only have this one life to live fully alive. 


I'm getting it more and more as time goes by. It's not what you do or how much you have! It's knowing who God is and who I am (which is not God) and it's living out of that knowledge and living it fully alive everyday! I say, Yes God! I do intend to fulfill your hopes for my life! Who's with me on this? I mean when was the last time you saw a bird take a bath? Do you think that are having such a good time because they wish they were fish? No, they are living out a fully alive life! It's saying, I love you and meaning it. It's speaking what's on your heart out of truth and with love. It's about walking beside each other and showing each other where God is and has been working in our life's. 


It's time to get off the couch and starting playing like squirrels, who by the way, know how to play!