Winter Turns to Spring

I realize that when I finish this year of review, it will be right when I turn 49, my own personal year of jubilee.  I have a friend who is there right now and celebrating it thus:

http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/lisatuttle/projectjubilee?utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=share&utm_source=at-facebook&utm_content=eua#.TxiwIeD84sQ.facebook
I am excited as I anticipate how this prompt to prelude my own jubilee year with a backward glance might culminate!  There is a hint, I think, in this idea of impending jubilee, but it is probably too soon to see exactly how it will manifest itself. 
For now, I progress to the end of winter, 2003:
Feb 24, 2003
John 4:11--"Sir, Thou has nothing to draw with..."
Do I still think Jesus has nothing to draw with, not just regarding His own needs, but mine also?  If I do believe this, then my misgivings will affect my trust and my choices.  Do I believe in his acuity apart from my own?  Seems like a silly question, but do I unconsciously behave as if He can only operate under my own mental ceiling?  Forgive me and grow me, God, wherever this is the case...by Your Son's gift...Amen.

March 6
Do I realize that God' love is an "unmade" thing?  What a concept!  Today I stand in awe of the mystery of that!  It is timeless. It never started.  It will never end.

Maybe lately I've been allowed to experience a frantic life pace for this spiritual purpose:  that I come to grips with the wonder of timelessness.  For me right now, everything is so tightly scheduled that I rush everything.  And I think I rush spiritual things as well.  Lee Strobel in The Case for Faith talks about our earthly lives being less about personal comfort and more about prep and training for eternity.  I must embrace this idea of prep trumping comfort in ways I haven't been acknowledging.  When I look up the word prep in the concordance, I get Ephesians 6:15 "And your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace."

Back then, I didn't have an online lexicon at my fingertips, complete with its enhanced definitions.  This Biblical word for preparation according to Thayer's lexicon connotes "Readiness of mind with the promptitude and alacrity which the Gospel produces."  Promptitude and alacrity; in other words, cheerful briskness.  That's absolutely a characteristic of those  quick epiphanies that come after a seemingly endless hard time in life--the most recent being my journal's record of the agony of being overworked. 

I've known for a while that this is a feature of my walk with God: birth pangs that drag on and escalate, only to be quickly replaced by the joy of a new life in my keeping...to use Biblical imagery.  I just didn't realize I was doing this particular dance with God so far back in time.  Cool!