A Summer Love Affair

This summer I have started a wonderful love affair with a new author named Barbara Brown Taylor. A reading love affair that is, but one of the best in a while. Over the years I have stumbled across different writers that just connect with me in a very soulful way. John Ortberg, Carl Hiassen, Henri Nouwen,  Joan Borysenko and Wayne Muller to name a few.  These authors captured me with their words and called my name on hot lazy summer days. Their writing was so delicious that it was like sitting down to a great meal of comfort food that leaves you feeling full and satisfied. You know when a line from their pen can make you stop, re-read and ponder or brings a smile from deep inside with delight that someone else in the world thinks the thoughts you think.

Well, Mrs. Taylor does just that. I believe that there are times that God uses different writers to gently tug at our hearts or kick us in the butt to allow us to hear what he wants to whisper to us from these pages. Just as the lines in Leaving Church where Barbara says…” I have tried hard to remember the exact time I fell in love with God….” I love the concept of falling in love with God. Now that is a true love affair and like Barbara I can’t remember when mine began either. What I do remember is having conversations with him as a very young girl, laying in the grass in my front yard, looking up at the blue skies and clouds and feeling his presence and love for me. This love affair has been going on for years, thanks for reminding me Barb.

Then the other line was…“I let my feelings off the leash and follow them around. When something moves in my peripheral vision, I leave the path to investigate, since it would be a shame to walk right by a burning bush.” I have always hated leashes, even Sunshine is Leash-less for most of our walks. As long as she knows my voice and will listen when I call…..Hummm, sound familiar? If we are leash-less by free-will do we respond when called? Or race past a burning bush or two? Do you follow your feelings and see where they take you?

How about the line she uses when talking about David, Sarah or Jacob, “While their cravings clearly brought them all kinds of well-deserved trouble….their desires propelled them in ways that God could use, better than God could use those who never colored outside the line.” Well, having been created to color outside the lines and have had my share of well-deserved troubles, I can now see how God can use ALL of our life experiences for his glory. There was no wild coloring of mine that was ever out of the reach of his mercy and grace.

So, this summer, keep coloring, go leash-less but know the call of your master voice, and don’t miss a burning bush or two that might just be the best detour you took! Find a good read and may you hear His whisper in your life on the pages you turn!

“When you live in god, your day begins when you lose yourself long enough for God to find you, and when God finds you, to lose yourself again in praise.”Barbara Brown Taylor; An Altar in the World