In the Center
Posted on Friday, September 5, 2008 by oneP3 | (0) Comments
In The Center
By: Miriam
Sometimes I know God in the very core of who I am. It is not related to my circumstances. It isn’t shrouded in comfort. It is what it is. Just knowing. I’ve had this experience recently. It’s hard to put into words and most of the time I don’t even try, but today I am going to. I see myself in the middle of this big, finite, messy, human circle. In the circumference of the circle lies every ideology, every hope, every hurt, every theory of who God is and how life works. My view on relationships, people, missions, parenting, beauty, politics, success, failure, hope, hopelessness are housed somewhere along this circle. My living and breathing relationships are here in this circle. My past is there. The events of my present and future lie somewhere along that continuum. And I am sitting on the inside of that circle. Sometimes I feel like a little kid, skipping in this circle like “Ring around the Rosy” visiting the different things that live in this perimeter. Sometimes it is a luxury to do this, like picking up fine jewelry and studying it closely before putting it back on the shelf. Sometimes it is a chore. I pick up the figurine for the millionth time and dust it off wondering why I keep it anyways.
But these days, I am most at home sitting in the middle of the circle because this is where I know God most. I don’t know how He is going to work in the details that lie along the edge of the circle. I’m am mostly unsure of how He intersects with the temporal areas of my life…the things that are different tomorrow than they are today and will only continue to change. But the beauty of sitting in the middle of that circle is that I don’t have to know these things. Because in the center, all that matters is that God is who He says He is, whether I can make sense of it or not. In the center, Jesus is with me always, even to the end of the age. It is in the center of this circle, when I stop dusting the seemingly harmless idols of my life, that I find peace. Not a circumstantial peace, but exactly the opposite. A peace that comes from knowing that I am no longer a slave to the circumstances. I love this place. Not in the warm, fuzzy way that I love people, or Christmas, or good food. I love it in the way someone who has just finished running a marathon loves walking, or someone who has just broken a fast loves a banana. It is the contrast that I appreciate so much because the contrast exposes for me its true value.
Sitting in the center of our circles matters because this is where we meet God. This is where the chaos of our lives meets the deafening silence of a stilled and quiet heart before the Lord. This is where God, in all His bigness and unfathomableness, holds us to His breast like a mother. And whether or not the details on our circle change, which indubitably they will, it doesn’t matter so much anymore. Because we are no longer swept up in the vortex of our circumstances, but instead, are sitting in the presence of an unchanging, loving Savior. Be still and know.