In a conversation with a friend earlier this week, they expressed the frustration about their lack of ability to know God in this season of their life. As we were talking, an image flashed through my mind of the differences in how I was taught to see God and how I have come to know him. This is the result of that flash. 

“It is the journey of a lifetime. And it’s like you’re just coming to a place where you can push back the curtains to see the sun rising as the new day dawns. But it’s okay if you’re still resting for a bit before you get up to do that. In the stillness, God is there. In the silence, you can know him.
 
He is big enough to be all there and strong enough to not need to prove it.
 
What comes to mind is laying in a hotel room after sunrise. You know how dark it can be, except for the rays of light that break through the cracks? The church says look at the light and you’ll see God. Which isn’t exactly wrong, maybe, but it’s a controlled perspective of God. It’s a safe description of God. And I have learned that I see the beauty of God in the dust that dances on that beam of light. Dust that we are trained to clear away, to clean up, to not let accumulate. But we were made from dust. And we are beautiful. And the image of God can be found in the dusty, undesirable places as surely as it can be found in us even if we are deemed dusty and undesirable.
 
You are shaking off the dust of years of life lived to survive. It’s okay to take a moment to hold the tension of frustration at the mess being created and the beauty of becoming. You might sneeze a little. Your eyes might water. But there is beauty that comes when dust is stirred up. There is health and progress.
 
It’s just rarely as quick a process as we would like.”
 
It struck me as significant for so many of the people that I know of who are pursuing health beyond the systems and structures that taught them to limit God. It may not have been intentional teaching, but the result was the same and teaching ourself a different way is a difficult undertaking.
 
Healing doesn't just happen. It is hard, and heavy, and will likely mess us up a bit on the way to becoming… but God is in the mess, and we can find beauty in the process of becoming if we move beyond what we have always been told beauty looked like.
 
A follow up conversation with that friend tonight led me to make the following statement. They had just expressed a deep sadness at the lost years from before they were able to begin living. In their words, “So much wasted. Space, time, opportunity… But – God knows.”
 
I couldn’t just leave it there. Not because I disagree, but because the resignation behind statements like that often allows us to settle for less. It’s a place where we can come to see the dust, but instead of being able to revel in the beauty of the dance as it moves across the light, we deem the light useful and get to work clearing the air.
 
“It would be really easy to settle into regret, and there is definitely a time and place for the grieving. Just don’t forget that you are living, breathing proof that the story is far from over. God does know… but he gives you more than just glimpses of his plan for you all the time.
 
Space, time, and opportunity are as infinite as the possibilities they contain. They are as infinite as the possibilities YOU contain. And even if that feels like a portion of what could have been... it's still an immeasurable, incalculable, and invincible amount.”
 
And that, my friend, is the simple truth. You have so much life left. There is so much hope in the healing. And whether you travel the globe or not, whether you are a guru or not, whether you are wealthy or not, whether you are ever anything other than you are right this moment without looking around… you are a person of immeasurable, incalculable, invincible preciousness… and the God who created you delights in you just because you are you.