I love my sister’s house.

Sid and I arrived late Monday night from our sojourn in Florida. In some ways it seems like we’ve been gone for a long time. In other ways it’s as if I never left, for my heart is always here even when away.

One of my favorite rooms is her “cabin room”, a delightful second floor wooden room warmed in the winter with a wood stove at its center with full view of the backyard trees through wall to wall windows. It’s as if I’m in a forest with a literal bird’s eye view.

This morning as I sat there with my morning coffee I was so at peace, feeling God’s Presence. It had been awhile since I had felt that peaceful intimacy, for the last couple weeks had been overly busy with a trip to Syracuse crammed into packing up four months of living into a 25 foot RV for thousands of miles of travel combined with a multitude of phone and face-to-face interactions in the mix. Not complaining. Just noticing how different I was feeling in the peace of this morning.

Once again, our Creator spoke to me through His created glory as the overwhelming beauty of the massive trees filled my gaze in the quiet of the new day.

Although I think of myself as a “new believer”, I’m actually no longer so new in my relationship with Yeshua. It’s been a quarter of a century which is hard to believe. Yet what I think creeps in is taking Him for granted. This tendency is true of probably all long term relationships, so why would this one be different?

We know it’s important to nurture our love relationships. Interestingly, it’s different on the divine side, for the evidences of Yeshua being in the trenches with us daily are uncountable. He’s doing His part to nurture the relationship with us, but what are we doing in return?

That’s where our being human enters the challenge. Our love relationship with our Creator may feel not only like a long term relationship but a long distance one as well. Quite the contrary. He’s here intimately. The issue becomes our inability to sense that reality, often due to our busy-ness, and so, we lose emotional attachment with Him, that tangible love feeling. We know Him but can lose Him in our heart, or we love Him but get lazy in expressing our heart’s desire. In our minds we believe He is God but we become blind to His Presence. The more that happens, the more we don’t sense how much He loves us and is in relationship with us.

While our Creator is patiently, steadfastly all in, we get busy, distracted, love Him in some abstract way, but without demonstration, classic taking for granted behavior. Even if we are praying and studying Scripture we may not perceive His Presence. We don’t notice our actual relationship with Him, and so, we can ignore doing our part to participate in that relationship. It’s a pitfall of our busy lives but one which I want to acknowledge as such, for if we recognize this is a reality perhaps we can choose to reset our perspective. If we do reset and overcome this tendency, we know the result is transformative.

Reset.  In my life this is a good time to do just that for I’m transitioning back to my life here geographically and in so many ways vis-à-vis relationships and responsibilities. I’m committed to reset my love relationship with our Creator not as an occasional thought, but rather, with deliberate intention.

I plan to remind myself how much He loves me and is in my life and I want to show Him I love Him too by my thoughts, prayers, and actions. I also know that as I raise my consciousness in this way I will be able to see the little ways He reveals His Presence – the synchronicities. His love of us is an amazing divine mystery, one I do not want to take for granted.

I know it will take discipline to make these changes in my busy life. For it’s when we get swept into our usual routines or become overwhelmed with responsibilities that we can forget how precious is the love He has for us.

Reminding ourselves of our love for the Lord moves us to a whole different way of living our lives as it puts everything around us into a perspective framed by His overflowing love of us. We become joy-filled. We feel shalom in the midst of chaos and challenge when we fuel our lives with active interaction in this divine gift of intimate relationship with Him.

We have the tools – Community, Conversation/prayer, and Consistent Scripture study. In addition, throughout the day I can draw close to Him just by momentarily closing my eyes or gazing out a window and just loving our Creator in my thoughts with all my heart. Even in the middle of a meeting or between conversations with others I can just silently say “I love you, God” just as I’m already thanking Him throughout the day for the many blessings I notice He bestows.

I can say daily, audibly or not, the opening words of the V’ahavta. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” I know this is possible no matter our setting – home, school, work – for we all have moments “alone”. It just takes a few seconds to reset the most important relationship we have – with God through Yeshua.

As I look out the window of my sister’s cabin room I’m enthralled by the movement of the unusually tall trees and how the light is shining on their branches. The forest has a variety of types of trees. I don’t understand how the tallest branches of the thinner ones can be blowing in different directions. Perhaps the limbs are so tall and wiry that the air currents can create this rather chaotic sway. Their movement reminds me of our times as young believers searching, seeking. Yet for me I see them as less stable, confused compared to the immobile evergreens lush and sturdy.

As the sun rises over the front of my sister’s house the light shines on the backyard frenzied branches, its warmth and rays brilliant, reaching out to nurture, just as our Creator is ever present, bringing loving warmth and His light to all who seek Him. The light eventually shines on the appropriately named evergreens as they too receive nurturing light suggesting the grounded foundations of our knowledge of Him felt by us as we mature in our faith. Ultimately a bird flies out from the depth of the forest, then another, and another, spreading His created glory to the world.

Feel the love. Nurture the relationship. Spread the joy. Reset and rejoice.

Shabbat shalom.

Diane