Christ came to give us life, both eternal and abundant. His death bequeaths us eternity, but it is His life that bestows to us its abundance. In the shadow of the I AM Christ we learn the immensity of walking fully present in the moment with Him. It changes everything. It infuses the day with beauty. It infuses the night with light. It infuses pain with hope and lonliness with His presence. Walking in this place is walking in the Spirit and it becomes the wellspring of love and joy, peace and patience, gentleness and self-restraint. As we enter into the moment with Him, we walk in a holy place.
In walking fully present, Christ saw what we do not. He saw those lost in obscurity...the small man in a tree, the bowed over woman, the children scuttled away by His disciples...the widow who offered her meager all. Fully present, He felt what we do not....a touch of faith rather than curiosity...a touch of need...of desperate hope....and He wept. He wept over what He saw and what we fail to see. He lingered with what He saw. He dined with what He saw, and He touched what He saw,
And He loved what He saw.
Christ, the I AM....the eternally present God....As we abide in Him and walk in Him, we learn to drink in great draughts of life and carry it to the desert and pour it out. Practicing the Present
Today --- Train your senses to be alive. Feel the sun touch your face...the wind move across your skin. See the color of your child's eyes; hear the sound of laughter. Look fully into the eyes of the one who speaks with you and see what is hiding there.
Walk slowly through the day or hour. Smell the rain before it comes. Hear the leaves rustle in the wind...the birds chirping in the trees.
Then look for the Christ in your day. He speaks through the stranger at the store. He suffers on the street corner or in the hospital...or in jail. He grieves with the homeless and calls to us from their lives. He whispers His love in the winds of comfort that stir in the canyons of our soul.
It is the I AM speaking and walking in each moment of the day, drenching it with His presence and His life....pouring it out to those who will walk with Him there so we may carry His life to parched and arid places and pour it out to all who thirst for something more.
The Abundant Life retreats and offerings deal with the richness of life lived in the moment with Christ and the ways of our journey to such a place.