Breaking Chains

A most recent read reminded me of something I already knew.  In fact, it is something I was told to do when I left the pulpit and came to the farm thirteen years ago.   Shortly after getting settled into this new place and season of my life, the Lord spoke saying a very simple Word.  "Pay atttention," is what I heard coming up from within my spirit.  And while it was no thundering voice of the Lord such as Moses surely must have heard on Mt. Sinai, it came, nonetheless, and was in retropspect more like the holy voice Elijah heard on Mt. Horeb that was wrapped up in the silence.  The bottom line was that I knew it to be the voice of God.    

So, here I am reading a book some thirteen years later and finding myself being reminded of a word that has been like something blazed across the front door of my spirit.  In her book, "The White Stone,"  Esther De Waal wrote, "...life must be lived in the present moment.  The past is past, I must let it go; the future is unknown, the only reality lies in the present."  I should have not been so impacted by a word I already knew, but I realized such was exactly the case as I wrote those lines in my journal.  Sometimes we discover that it is a long way from our head to our heart.    

Many times we find that it is not the very old stuff in our life which binds us, but that some recent loss can be like new chains which seem so strong they will never be broken.  I am grateful that no chains have such binding power.  We may be held for a moment by what seems unbreakable and forever, but God keeps calling us to pay attention to what He is doing in the present moment of our life.  He does not resign us to the chains of the past, but is beside us to help us at the right time to break free so that we can start living again the days He is giving.  Sometimes the past holds some memories we would like to forget and sometimes it holds memories we do not want to turn lose, but the past is not a place where going after God will allow us to stay.  To pay attention to the holy of the present is surely the key to breaking those chains which immobolize us.