and all the people said.

be still and know that i am God.

these feelings of intense romance come late at night for me. during the day i'm moving. if not my body, my lips and mind never cease their rambling and i wonder why i don't know God. when everyone i usually call is sleeping, i'm left awake just being. i've gotten into the habit lately of laying in my back yard and looking up at the night sky. elizabeth and i usually count shooting stars and i never realized how many of them there were. we usually see a couple here and there but last week we counted four in only a half hour. FOUR! tonight i saw but one. until recently, though, i could count on a single hand the number of shooting stars i saw in my lifetime. i don't think there was a shooting star shortage before i hit my twenties - i just never looked up long enough.

one time a few years back, i was talking with my friend genesis on the phone. i was at my wits end and was looking at the sky as she was talking. with my feet on my driveway, i silently begged God to give me a shooting star. kind of a way to tell me if i was going to screw everything up or if i was going to pull through. it may sound dumb and it may be dumb, but the star covered the sky that night. i knew what it meant then and i know what it means now.

tonight i was thinking of all the people that came before me that made a difference in this world. not only people that made history like martin luther, mother theresa, or c.s. lewis, but people whose lives never got recorded - mothers who sacrificed so much for the sake of her children; fathers who loved so fervently that their children knew what a father's love felt like. it was their drive for choosing right over ease that changed the world. i think of them because i'm under the same sky they were under. i'm under the same God they were under.

i want my relationship with God to be a dance, not a walk. our movements to be in beautiful unison. i want him to draw me close and tell me his love for me will never ever end.

Lord, my God,
embrace me in my entirety.
hold my soul,
arouse my sleeping heart.
take my hands and purify them for your work.
let me find rest in your strength,
shelter in your house,
peace under your night sky,
and satisfaction in your arms.

amen.