In this morning’s New Testament in a Year text (John 5:25-47, NRSV), I found a passage that well describes me before coming to a spiritual awakening, which happened to me as a result of living the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous:

39 “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. 40 Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

This is a reminder that, without relationship, religion is futile. Bible knowledge that astounds my fellows will not impress the Father. Kingdom work that rescues wounded and inspires multitudes will not endure. Casting out demons and performing miracles may still be answered, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). What matters is my answer to God’s loving call, which seems to say, “I demonstrated by my life, death and resurrection that you are worth dying for. Will you love me by living with, by and for me forevermore? Will you follow me instead of your cares and concerns and make me the charge of your past, present and future? Will you return to me, to be in and of me, as I intended when I created you?”

humpback whale breachingToday’s meditation from Our Daily Bread related a whale’s surfacing for air before living in its habitat below the surface to a human’s need for spiritual refreshment – no, sustenance – before being able to go about our routines of daily ministry. Without this “spiritual air” we cannot survive as we get along with our business below. Still, we cannot rest forever at the surface or we do not fulfill our purpose. Neither can we suspend ourselves more than a moment in the light and wind of our spiritual Father’s embrace as we breach the surface in worship. Our lives, for this brief existence, are predominantly lived in the depths. It is there we find our purpose and provision, though we return even hourly to kiss our maker with great repetition or die to the murky depths below.

Dear Father, today, keep me connected with you and breathe into me Your divine breath of life, that I may live out Your will for me, here on Earth as it is in Heaven.