Peace.

In the middle of insanity, I find myself returning to and yearning for the presence of God. It struck me the other day just how much I've managed to push him away...and it shocked me. It's been a gradual, every day "It-doesn't-matter-this-one-time" thing, and oh how effective it's been in completely shifting my focus, my way of going about life.

I don't like it. I feel like if I would just succumb, my life would become a whirlwind of courageous lampstanding for God. I feel it in my guts that I've been called to a life lived with purpose. Whether that involved great and marvelous things, I don't know. I suppose I feel that, too. But more than that, I am not satisfied with a dry, 9-to-5 fifty years, followed by ten more in the nursing home or whatever equivalent there is of that.

How do I see myself in ten years? As a totally devoted follower of Christ, completely focused on him. It's what I've always wanted to be, whatever "career" comes along with that. It doesn't matter to me. I adapt.

More than anything, I want to entrench myself in the bowels of God's grace and love. I want to understand him. I want to love him. I want to completely die to myself. I want to kill my ego and my pride, and become his slave. I want to say and do whatever he leads me to, and not even give one thought to what those around me think, because the only thing that I see is Christ, seated at the right hand of God the Father. I want to be consumed.

There is a great peace to be found, I think, in the middle of the fiery furnace. In the middle of knowing you're in God's will, however horrifying your external circumstances are. There is a verse in Matthew that has clung to my heart ever since I began to think about it: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." I tremble, and I can't control how my teeth grind against each other, how fast my heart is racing. I want this so badly. I hate that I'm not already here. I hate being passive one night and feeling like this the next.

I want to be the burning bush that never turns to ash. I want to stand in the Holy of Holies, the veil lying around me, ripped apart by the mighty hand of God. I want. someone to reach out. and gather me into a greater purpose.