For Your Week Ahead . . . 

 Solitude is
the furnace of transformation.
But 
the world
burns for our conformation.

In this world our compulsions drive us to be
relevant
spectacular
and powerful*.
We run toward friends, work and varieties of distractions
for the temporary high of affirmation while 
Greed tries to drown our authentic selves
as we 
​swim for our lives
every day.

In solitude these compulsions,
propeled by greed
stare Grace right in the face
and in that light,
those deep fears 
driving our compulsions
find a safe place to be laid down,
surrendered
The authentic struggle
exposes weakness and vulnerability
where the greatest of struggles
lead to the greatest encounters.

In the solitude of these daily deserts
we reject the burning embers within
calling us to conformity
and instead focus on Christ
who in His own desert experience, 
when tempted with conformity,
rejected the temptor of greed by saying,

"You must worship the LORD your God and serve only him."

Only in this place do we find our 
 truest identity,
ultimate purpose 
and 
deepest desires.


Blessings for your week ahead as you seek out your own personal desert retreats each day.
May all your struggles, failures and desires be consumed with grace and balanced with truth.

Love,
Rachael
​

* I have been reading The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry by Henri J.M. Nouwen.  It has been awful quiet on this blog for the past 8 months.  I guess I have been walking through my own desert experience.  My experience hasn't necessarily been dealing with conformity to the world but reconciling my own deepest desires to the Lord's desires for me and then struggling through those incongruencies.  I don't know that I am back.  This post was a real struggle, but I thought I would give this a try one more time.