Hi Friends,

Sometimes you put something down on paper and it haunts you years later.

The last few weeks, phrases from this writing has been nagging me. Like a song stuck in circling in my head that I can hum but can’t recall the words.

I finally pulled it up to read it through, and want to share it with you today.

Let’s start with a chorus I sang about the beauty of God.

When I think I’ve seen it all
When I think I know Your heart​
​I find I’m only at the edge
Of where the beauty starts​

God is an ocean.

Depth, breadth, beauty unending. We could spend all our days searching Him out and not even begin to see all of Him.

His Word, our thought life, our rooms with the door shut: these are all portals to reach for and find Him.

Every taste is able to exhilarate the heart and capture our affection decade after decade after decade.

And even after all those decades, with a heart fully given, we may have seen but a thimble full of who He is.

He is an ocean.

Yet sometimes in the pursuit of God the human heart grows weary. Forgets the Person behind the words on the page or the Heart we are reaching for when we pray.

We can begin to look to the right and the left and measure. Compare. Feel puffed up. Feel ashamed.

Suddenly what was a hunt for treasure becomes a collection of facts. Cold, hard, measurable.

Spiritual elitism is pride, and it is as vile a sin as any. It will keep us distracted with our measuring sticks and boastful words cloaked in spiritual externals.

When we do this we have forgotten that He is not a list of bullet points and facts to be aquired. He is beauty.

I want to go into my room and shut the door without fanfare.

I want to turn my thoughts to Him throughout my day, mulling over His Word.

I want the secret place of my heart where no eyes see — that hidden place, where He has planted a garden — to be flourishing with life.

I want to stand at the shore of the ocean of Him every day, humbled by the vastness of what I see. Awakened by the beauty.

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​Oh God, search my heart. Cleanse me of compromise, of pride. Restore to me the joy of salvation. The sweetness of that great search for more of the treasure of You. Show me Your beauty.

— Anna

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