Five Minute Friday - Last

Writing again this week with Lisa Jo Baker and the Five Minute Friday Crew. This blessed, beautiful place where we open our hearts and let words and tears and the inner workings of our lives bleed and flow and dance across the virtual pages. Yes, this community opens wide and invites you in to share. Come and visit and read. You will be blessed.

This Week: Last

Go

The light fades earlier; a little more each day. This is the hardest part of summer for me. Saying goodbye to the light that has lingered all the way past nine o’clock in the evenings. Stretching out across the sky in an artist’s palette of rose, gold, and lavender. It’s the tipping point into Autumn. The beginning of the turning of the season. And I just want it to linger a bit longer.

I find I am this way with so many things. Not just seasons. Not just summer. Anything that brings a smile, which stirs up joy, that makes happiness overflow until it runs in rivulets down your cheeks, I just want it to hang on. I want it to last. I remember feeling that way standing around the campfire at youth camp – arms flung around my friends; singing praises into the night sky until we were hoarse. I wanted to stay on the mountaintop. I remember feeling this way when visiting family that I haven’t seen in years. We stay up late curled up on sofas with warm mugs of coffee or tea or cider and pretend that we’ll sleep in another life. I want to stay in the warmth of their love.

I wrote about something similar earlier this week. About hanging onto things – keeping them for the someday that was never coming. Stockpiling soaps, and, lotions, and notebooks, and all kinds of goodness knows what else, trying to make them last for some future date that was never going to come.

Photo by earl53

I’m thinking hard about the now. About how these moments need to be seized now. How the things that should be made special should be made special now. The smiles we share, the joy we feel, the love we share – it doesn’t work to try and hold it in a bottle and save it up or store it up. We honor it, and multiply it when we use it and share it now. When we take the love that we have been given and we bless others with it now.

God gave us gifts to use and share to edify each other, and lift each other up, and encourage those around us, and He gave them to us to do those things now. He’s given us an abundance of blessings in our lives – even if we feel that we are among the very least (we have so much more than we know) – and He’s given us those blessings so we can reach out and touch those who are broken, and needy, and without Him … now.

As I write, the thing that comes to mind so strongly is that the only way we can make these gifts and blessings last, is to give them away.

It is a risk.
It is scary.
It makes us vulnerable.
But it is what we are called to do.
Reach out.
Do it now.
Be the miracle.

I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith and that your life will be strong in love and be built on love. And I pray that you and all God’s holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love—how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is. Christ’s love is greater than anyone can ever know, but I pray that you will be able to know that love. Then you can be filled with the fullness of God. With God’s power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for all time, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:17-21 NCV

Stop

How to Join:

Want to know how Five Minute Friday got started and how to participate? All the details are here. No editing or second guessing. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community.

I'd love to connect with you some more - stop on by the Three Bees Facebook Page or connect with me on Twitter @3BeesBlueBonnet. Let's continue the conversation!