I heard this saying once: "When you take one step towards God, God takes one hundred steps towards you." But I misremembered it, and have been quoting it to myself as: "When you take one step towards God, God takes one thousand steps towards you."
The past few days, I have been talking on here about my job, about discerning and committing to things through difficult times. But today, I wanted to dive into why I think it's important.
The things we do, the way we treat each other, those things give us and the people around us messages about how the world is. Our experiences shape our beliefs. This is why God tells us so many times in the bible to love each other. This is why we we need to be in something for the long haul.
I believe that the world is teeming with God's love, and when I finally slow down enough, I can sense it, pulsing, the heartbeat of a God so alive, so radiant with love, that she/he would take one thousand steps to reach someone before they could take their second step toward God.
And in the sad/ hard/ scary/ terrible moments when I cannot sense this pulse, in those moments I take comfort that I only need to be brave enough to take the first step, and God will meet me there.
Sometimes, my first step looks exactly like a step: out my front door to go tutor or to go for a walk. Sometimes it looks like me rolling out my yoga mat. And sometimes its as simple as an internal heart shift, a whispered prayer.
I've been going to my church for almost nine years. I love it. But the past year or so, it feels like nothing really speaks to me. It seems like most of the sermons are really "heady" for lack of a better word. I used to love the music, and I still like some of it, but what I love now are hymns and chants, like the ones from the Taizé community in France.
So imagine my surprise when, Sunday, we sang a song from Taizé in church. I felt the distance closing from 1001 steps to zero. I felt the pulse of God's love. Below is the song we sang. If you aren't familiar with Taizé music, songs are very short and written in many languages. The idea is to keep them short so that you can let the words soak into your soul.
Today, may you take one step towards God, and may you sense God taking one thousand steps towards you.
The past few days, I have been talking on here about my job, about discerning and committing to things through difficult times. But today, I wanted to dive into why I think it's important.
The things we do, the way we treat each other, those things give us and the people around us messages about how the world is. Our experiences shape our beliefs. This is why God tells us so many times in the bible to love each other. This is why we we need to be in something for the long haul.
I believe that the world is teeming with God's love, and when I finally slow down enough, I can sense it, pulsing, the heartbeat of a God so alive, so radiant with love, that she/he would take one thousand steps to reach someone before they could take their second step toward God.
And in the sad/ hard/ scary/ terrible moments when I cannot sense this pulse, in those moments I take comfort that I only need to be brave enough to take the first step, and God will meet me there.
Sometimes, my first step looks exactly like a step: out my front door to go tutor or to go for a walk. Sometimes it looks like me rolling out my yoga mat. And sometimes its as simple as an internal heart shift, a whispered prayer.
I've been going to my church for almost nine years. I love it. But the past year or so, it feels like nothing really speaks to me. It seems like most of the sermons are really "heady" for lack of a better word. I used to love the music, and I still like some of it, but what I love now are hymns and chants, like the ones from the Taizé community in France.
So imagine my surprise when, Sunday, we sang a song from Taizé in church. I felt the distance closing from 1001 steps to zero. I felt the pulse of God's love. Below is the song we sang. If you aren't familiar with Taizé music, songs are very short and written in many languages. The idea is to keep them short so that you can let the words soak into your soul.
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| These are the words to the song we sang, painted on a rock. Photo from 2010 when I visited Taizé, France. |
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