Today is the 5^th Mon­day of the month. 

These are the odd weeks.  The shift­ing week.  Start­ing with one month and end­ing with anoth­er, you nev­er know quite which month you are sup­posed to act in.  Which month’s goals do you focus on?  Which month’s bills do you pay? This is the week that I share a struggle. 

Over Christ­mas this past year, I picked up Madeleine L’En­gle’s book ‘Walk­ing on Water’. I real­ized rather quick­ly that this was prob­a­bly a mis­take. Not only had I just read Andrew Peter­son­’s ‘Adorn­ing the Dark’ about being a chris­t­ian who cre­at­ed art, but I was­n’t a cre­ative. While read­ing Peter­son, I was faced with the urge to cre­ate some­thing despite my com­plete lack of musi­cal abil­i­ty. I can’t sing, play an instru­ment, or even hum. I am not a poet, for I still strug­gle to even read poet­ry. I don’t weave fan­tas­ti­cal tales into sto­ries for eager read­ers every­where. In short, I don’t have a very cre­ative mind. I’ve learned how to work with wood, but not well enough to cre­ate beau­ti­ful fur­ni­ture, and I’ve built the skill of gram­mar, but gram­mar does not make a beau­ti­ful tale. So, when I opened L’En­gle’s book and she starts out with the strug­gle of being an artist and cre­at­ing good art and reflect­ing, I knew that I was in trouble. 

In her pur­suit of God, L’En­gle found art. Because art shows us the very heart of our cre­ator. He cre­ates, and there­fore, we all have the urge to cre­ate too. For we are made in His image. Some of us are bet­ter at it than oth­ers. I strug­gle with not being reflec­tive or gift­ed enough to be a cre­ative.  I want to draw, paint, sing, play the piano, but I’ve tried them all enough to know that those are not my call­ing in life. Instead, I am called to math­e­mat­ics, admin­is­tra­tion, and the entire breadth of the left mind. In truth, I delight in this, but still I strug­gle. For the soul of the Spir­it is in me and he cre­ates in me a yearn­ing to cre­ate, but I don’t know what He wants me to do. I strug­gle to just find time to reflect let alone devel­op skills to reflect and cre­ate something. 

Which brings me to a con­vic­tion from L’En­gle: We need to learn to Be. That is exist. Take time to be a per­son and think. Here is what L’En­gle says in her own words, I hope you hear the truth in this and find time to be as we slide into the hul­la­bal­loo of Spring:

I sit on my favourite rock, look­ing over the brook, to take time away from busy-ness, time to be. I’ve long since stopped feel­ing guilty about tak­ing being time; it’s some­thing we need for our spir­i­tu­al health, and often we don’t take enough of it.