I struggled this morning with what to put here. Nothing seemed to be right. I am committed to memorizing the book of Colossians this year. I am doing it with about 900 people on the Facebook page Colossians in a Year. We commit 2 verses of Colossians to memory per week. It is very difficult for me and because of the difficulty it takes a lot of time out of my day to do it. I am simultaneously working on 3 other projects. One is this blog post, another is a research project for the hospital I work for, and one is submitting a grant proposal to my state department of health. All these are additional projects taken on over and above my full-time job, church and family relationships.
So this morning I was staring into space. Do you ever get those times when you have so much to do that you do nothing because mountains stand before you and you just can not take that first step? That’s where I was 40 minutes ago. I prayed and asked God to help me. “You know Scripture is the most important,” He said to me out of the depths of my spirit.”If you have that, all else will come.” I know that, but I wasn’t obeying that. He is my lens. All else becomes very clear when my lens is polished so…I just spent the past half hour working on Colossians 2:1-10. The new verses that I began yesterday for this week are Colossians 2:9-1o
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
Spending time…not being distracted…keeping my focus on Christ “I have all the riches of complete understanding” (Col 2:3)….getting my marching orders…receiving discipline….adjusting my attitude…being reminded of His grace.
Intimacy was the focus of my doctoral dissertation. A definition of intimacy is a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another. Intimacy is an interesting phenomenon. If you seek it and strive for it, it eludes you. It comes as you are involved with another, most likely working together on some task entirely unrelated to relationship-building, suddenly and unexpectedly just spending time together, you realize you are becoming close. I have been studying Colossians every day since my New Year’s resolution January 1. Some days it consumes the better part of an hour in the morning. I mean, I am intense. I expected this to be difficult and it is. What I didn’t expect was the intimacy with Christ. Tears stream from my eyes, down my cheek as I say
[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation,
For in Him all things were created,
things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or powers, or rulers or authorities,
all things have been created through him and for Him
He is over all things
and in Him all things hold together
He is the head of the body, the church
He is the beginning, and the firstborn from the dead
so that in all things He might have the supremacy! Colossians 1:15-18
So now I am ready to move mountains. I hope this has been helpful to you. It has been helpful to me. Perhaps that is why I write here, it helps me by forcing me to think something through. You know, come to think of it, when I first began this, I just wanted to have a voice. What I didn’t know is that I would also get friendships and that those friendships would take me far beyond anywhere I could go on my own. I didn’t know I would get to know your hearts and your struggles and that my heart would join with yours. I didn’t plan on that. It just happened.
Living and loving on this Tuesday because He first loved me,
Dawn
Dschondog's Blog 