Trying to Stay Awake on God's Ball

"... that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints..." - Paul to the Ephesians

My eyes-lids feel like they have lead weights on them. Or perhaps my lashes are made of lead. I can barely keep them open. I've had my cup of coffee, and still I can barely keep awake. Maybe this new habit of getting up early is getting to me. "Hey genius, if you get up early, maybe you should go to bed early."

I find my drowsy state analogous to the Christian life. It's so hard to keep our eyes open. It's so difficult to be in a state of awareness and enlightenment. To know that God is reigning supreme today, not me, is the great struggle that I face every day.

My default is to coast, to find the easiest path through my day and take it. Like water flowing downhill, I take the least path of resistance.

But a mentor of mine said that every time we do something we don't want to do, we exercise our spiritual muscles. I'm in for a work-out today. That is if I don't cop-out.

Just a few days ago, when he said this, something clicked for me. It was sort of an "ah-ha" moment, or perhaps more of a "um-yeah-um-what-are-you-talking-about?" moment.

I love physical exercise, I "can go for miles and miles and miles, du-op". But when it comes to spiritual exercise I am inexcusably lazy. My arms are made of putty, my chest droopy and sunken in and my knees touching in my awkward pigeon stance.

But Paul encourages, even prays that I will have my eyes enlightened to the glorious inheritance and hope that I have. It is possible to work out. It is possible to live in the right direction. It is possible to be enlightened by the Spirit and to live for something so much bigger than me.

These possibilities, even the hope of these possibilities, have me reading and meditating today. God is too good of a Person to take for granted. His way of Life is too priceless a treasure to ignore.

A friend of mine was sharing with me last night that it seems that God just doesn't want him to do stuff. God doesn't really offer him anything more exciting than want he wants to do. God is restrictive.

I understand this feeling. I too suspect God of being with-holding. But it strikes me as ironic that all good is from God. He like no other, and he knows how to have fun. He creates, he plays, he enjoys, he works, he rests, he Lives!

If God will just keep my eyes open today, I'll try and take him at his word, that His Way is in fact the only Way. Of course God's stacked the cards against me: it's drizzling, I'm at Starbucks, and I have 6 hrs. of staring at a computer ahead of me.

Maybe as I am tempted to give in to a waking-computer-induced-coma, I will remember the ball I'm floating through space on, in a swirling dazzling galaxy, in a immense and expanding (or is it shrinking?) universe. For even my physical reality is almost too exciting to believe, but to think that the God of this physical reality dwells within me is simply "Whoa!"

Being a true realist is what I'm after.