Deep Treasure

“Approach each new day with desire to find Me. Before you get out of bed, I have already been working to prepare the path that will get you through this day. There are hidden treasures strategically placed along the way. Some of the treasures are trials, designed to shake you free from earth-shackles. Others are blessings that reveal My Presence: sunshine, flowers, birds, friendship, answered prayer. I have not abandoned this sin-wracked world; I am still richly present in it.

“Search for deep treasure as you go through this day. You will find Me along the way.” (Jesus Calling)

I have been finding it difficult to concentrate on God tonight. After spending all day cleaning, I keep thinking of how much there is left to do in my house. Parts of movies recently watched replay behind my eyelids. I mentally write my next blog, the one I intended to post five days ago. Things don’t slow down, and they certainly don’t stop.

I close my eyes, willing myself to focus on you, wishing the other images would fade into nothingness. They don’t. Maybe holding my hands out will help—open so you can take everything I have and I can receive you. Lists spin through my million-mile-an-hour brain. Frustration.

Listen for me, you say.

That sound be easy. Nature is quite loud tonight and I always hear you in nature.

I close my eyes and listen.

There is evidence of you all around.

Evidence, yes, you say, but that is not me tonight.

I try to identify individual sounds. The uneven rhythm of cicadas envelops me.

Are you in the cicadas?

No.

I try to tune out their hum and focus on another sound. Surprisingly, even from up on this hill I can hear croaks from the streambed below.

Are you in the frogs?

No.

The chorus of other insects blend and swirl together, and above them all (audibly and literally) an airplane passes overhead like a star broken free and on a mission. It is not beautiful. Man-made swooshes as metal fights past air is not beautiful.

Surely you are not in the airplane.

There is no reply, which I take for another no. What other sounds am I missing? Aunties talking by the home. Cars on the main road. Insects upon insects upon insects. Faint shouts from across the valley. I lean back and focus on my breathing.

My breathing.

Two long seconds in, stretched to their breaking point, a slow curve, and two measures out, relaxing and releasing, even, metered, and graceful. Over and over again. By the grace of God, over and over again.

That is where you are. Not in the cicadas or the frogs or the airplane, but in me. In every inhale and exhale. In every blink, every thought, every forgotten moment. I breathe you in and I breathe you out and still I think I have to look around to find you.

What a deep treasure it is to have your Spirit in me.