Parched

Last week was decent, but it seemed to be laced with times of spiritual dryness and apathy. My reaction toward these times was less than stellar. I didn't view them as a chance to press on, but a chance to soak in the doldrums of seeming spiritual emptiness. At times I even thought to myself, "now is a time to take a break from all this spiritual stuff."

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It's pretty amazing, isn't it, that the times when we need to press into those things that bring us to God we retreat from because we feel too weak, too empty, to inept? It's the first and easiest thing to do. Much harder is to press through the desert to get to the spring.

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Toward the end of the week I began reflecting on this seeming emptiness, and I began seeing it as an opportunity to draw more into God rather than retreat since He was apparently just not 'showing up.' Adversely, it was probably me who wasn't showing up. One of our bishops not too long ago used the phrase 'pressing into our humanity', and I think this was one of those times for me. To me it meant that I bring this sense of humanity...this spiritual ache...this seeming emptiness...to God. Instead of retreating from all the things I would normally do as part of a 'devoted' life I might have instead pressed into the deeper disciplines of the spiritual life in order to lean more into God, facing the present feelings of emptiness and inadequacy.

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Pursue, not retreat. Greater intensity, not throwing in the towel. These are the next roads to take when I face this kind of dryness.