Path

God, We walk an efficient pathway. We get a lot done. Each day we rise and go forth into this world intending to accomplish, get things done, build, and grow. We want to serve you and make things happen for the sake of the kingdom. It’s just not working real well, and we know it in our hearts. Yet, we don’t seek a different way. We think more of what isn’t working will grant us what we are missing. What we often lack is the knowledge of your love and sharing that with each other. This is our purpose, and we want to go that way. Yet, we pass by that path for the one named "This way - What We Get Done." Really, this path hinders your simple plan of us finding our beloved status in you.

In our bid to be the finest, we may lose sight of poverty and brokenness within us. So, we lose sight of you because it is there that you meet us.

In our hunger to express our gifts using them to the fullest, we may miss the experience your simple and without-fanfare gift of grace.

In our efforts to give you glory, we may lose sight of the glory, blessedness, and wonder you bestow on us.

Through our sacrifices to love and serve, we sometimes abandon the intimate knowledge of sacrificial love for us.

So much of what we do has created a frantic search for something we can only know through abandonment. When we abandon the forms and formulas, we find you. When we abandon the big deals and supercharged events, we find you. When we abandon this unending search for an imaginary something, we find you. When we abandon our way, we find you.

You are always the alternate path to every other around us.

You are found in the quiet and in silence, not always in the stimulating. You are found when we take time to reflect allowing you to stir our souls, less so in busyness. You are found when we set aside achievement disregarding a prize or win. Teach us to set it all aside, to place you in our sights and not the things we perceive to be of you. Teach us love letting go of efficiency. Teach us rest saying goodbye to reward and fulfillment.

May we go the path of you, not the tangled messy trail we forge for ourselves. That trail is busy. It’s full. It’s filled with stress and frustration. It’s a trail that feels like we are getting somewhere, a place of importance. Yet, it only leads to more of the same and less of you.

You are the path, you alone.