You wake up before the sun, grab your IPOD and it tells you it is 5:00 a.m. Weigh options. Sleep late and scramble or B) greet the day.
Make some tea. Consider packing. Grab the much much used drawing table, your dirty clothes and your slightly used bottle of porto and head west to the car. Enjoy the chill. Be aware, the sun is rising as you walk back the the retreat center.
Consider your options. Pack or what you will choose to do... Take your tea and head to the third floor, walk east and be amazed by the view. By God. By Yourself. By the music you chosen to listen to, Maria Schneider's Jazz Orchestra.
Pull a slip of paper out of your pocket. You have looked at this paper several times since it was handed to you 20 hours ago. It was given to you by a woman who has been your companion for seven days. Think this: "but not an 8th day, it is nearly time to leave."
Be aware and you will see your mistake.
You see your name written on the top left corner. As you read it again, her voice reads it to you.
Melt.
Watch the sunrise. Be amazed. Don't stop being amazed.
Pull the slip out again. You never know what will happen. and something does.
Now for the first time, it is your voice you hear and you are calling out to your friends. You desire for them to feel what you are feeling.
So go home. And when the doubts arise that what you experienced was not revelation, fight them off and start sharing what you experienced.
Find that piece of paper. Think of your companions and feel free to let your heart be amazed...
"When I think of the wisdom and scope of his plan, I fall down on my knees and pray to the Father of all the great family of God--- some of them already in Heaven and some down here on Earth--- that out of his glorious unlimited resources he will give you the mighty inner strengthening of his Holy Spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God's children should, how his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself." Ephesians 3:14-21
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