Something About The Joy

"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world."   Ephesians 1:14 When Dennis had his stroke, in the first ten minutes before the ambulance came, I had the strangest experience.  It seemed as if time were suspended, as if Dennis and I were alone together in the universe, with no awareness of any other place outside that spot on the bedroom floor where he had fallen, no awareness that anything existed outside our own present experience.   I had no thoughts of the past or the future.  I was not yet grieving or even afraid.  I was suspended in shock, and obviously anxious, but not for what might be coming, only for what was happening right then.  My mind and heart were rooted in that present moment, in that present place.   I believe in those few moments Dennis and I were existing, together, not in time, but in eternity.  We were existing in the state in which we had been chosen by God, before "time" and "space" were created--before &

So, I'm going to break this writer's block stage I've been going through for over a year now--this dark winter's night of the soul.  I'll do it by posting, with determined consternation, my devotional thoughts--here, where God and everybody can see them.  At least I'll try this.  We'll see if it breaks the dam. Today I've been reading Romans 8 in The Message .  This passage speaks to a problem I often have with boredom and listlessness, both precursors to despondency and depression, helplessness and stagnation.  (ie: writer's block)  The solution to this problem is both obvious and easy.  Why do I keep forgetting? Romans 8 says, Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life.  Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention