All Here

The New Year crept in on wet feet, swathed in mist and darkness and silence.





My soul relishes the silence.

I don't make New Year's resolutions.  And yet, this year, I am resolved.  I am resolved to be all here.  In each moment that passes.  

“Time is a relentless river and it rages on, respecter of no one.

And the only way to slow time is this: Enter fully into the current moment and the stream of time slows — slows — with the weight of a soul’s full attention.

We slow the torrent by being all here."  Ann Voskamp

Oh, I am sure there will be moments in which I will be swept away, gasping for breath, down the river of life.  I never learned to swim, and deep waters terrify.   But I am also sure that there will be many more moments of stillness as I watch the graces flow around me, those same graces that swirl around all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.  I will rejoice, both in the bitter and the sweet, for that is the stuff of life.  And I will find courage in enduring the difficulty, for "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." (Romans 5:4 ESV)

Curious, isn't it, that suffering can produce hope?

Next New Year's Eve, I want to stand in the quiet, at the ending that is another beginning, and reflect on the hope and the grace I have experienced.  

Because I was all here.