here and now

These are precious words from a friend Mandie Joy...

Jesus, your hem is wide. May her arms always be thrown wide – filled with gathering it.

And now that almost two years have passed, I look back and see the truth of her words as they’ve seeped into so many different seasons and purposes in my life. He is in us, waiting for us to grab his hem and ask for so much of Him that we and the people around us cannot help but be changed.

It matters little where we live or what we do or with whom we interact. What matters is that our where and what and who are simply an overflow of arms full of Jesus. We need not search out places to pour out before we can be used by Him. If our first goal in the morning is to gather in Jesus, we cannot help but spill Him out on everyone, everywhere. We might never know the effects of His light on the people around us, but make no mistake, the God who said “it is better for me to go away and send you my Spirit” has made good on that promise. He inhabits us, which means that if you’re hanging out at Starbucks, so is He. If you are spending your days reading books to preschoolers or tutoring college students or painting houses or selling those houses or excising tumors or home schooling or folding laundry or running a massive business, Jesus is hanging out there, too.
He has placed you where you are – today – because He wants to be in that place today, through you. Fill up on Him and watch Him inhabit your places. Wherever you are today, say, “Jesus, this is your place. Thank you that I get to be here with you.” Then spread your arms wide to gather in Him and whomever else He may bring your way.
Arms thrown wide to gather in Jesus will, almost as if by accident, gather in the broken, the lonely, the fatherless (in every sense of the word), those that we might have otherwise overlooked.
They might be in your corporate office. They might be in your favorite coffee shop. They might be sleeping in your house or sounding out letters in a book or pushing toy trains across your kitchen table. They might be living in a nursing home down the road or delivering a package to your front door. They might be serving you dinner or they might be the ones to whom you serve dinner night after night. They might be you.
That place where He has called you to be today? It might not look like the vision He has given you. Maybe it’s far from where you want to be. Maybe it even feels wrong.
But there’s safety in knowing that if He has put you here today, He is not wasting a minute of it. Far too often, we wait for what will be: when I graduate, when I get married, when the kids go to school, when I finally move to Africa, when we can adopt, when we’re done having babies, when I get that promotion.
I am so guilty of imagining what life will be like when I’m _______, how much simpler it could me, how much more security I’d have. And it is so right to long for good things, because God gives us vision and dreams and longings and purpose, but He wants to walk there with us, not missing a minute of joy along the way. Sometimes I can get so excited about the next big thing that I forget to invite Jesus into my today.
Here is just as valuable to Him as there. Now is His place. Let’s not miss it.

You can find her blog at www.mandiejoy.com