Minute Meditations

Are you still striving, friend? Are you still running yourself ragged looking to have something to offer the Lord to make you worthy of him? Do you look around you and wonder how so many people seem to have gotten so much closer to him while you have been working so hard and still feel so far away? Here’s the good news for today, for you and me both. We can quit the striving and the working and the approval seeking. We can exhale and fill our lungs with the fresh air of acceptance, of appreciation, of being invited into full friendship with Christ. We can be content, satisfied, and grateful. And we don’t have to do a thing to earn it, to deserve it. We don’t need to jockey for position. All we have to do is look up and see him here, beckoning us nearer, and then choose to be drawn in by his loving gaze and tuned into his voice.

—from the book Who Does He Say You Are? Women Transformed by Christ in the Gospels by Colleen  Mitchell

What Jesus desires for us, more than he demands it from us, is for us to know that we belong to him. Whether we are the ones who by nature seek the spot at his feet, or the ones who tie up their apron strings and keep their hands busy, we can all be alert and attentive. We are all invited to be disciples. And maybe, when we learn to be content in our own natural leanings, in the cellular makeup of our skin, maybe a wider spectrum of being will open up. Maybe suddenly we’ll stop wiping those dishes dry and just leave them there sopping wet while we draw near to Jesus. Or maybe we’ll stay, but the wiping will slow, the heavy sighs will silence, and our ears will tune in to the Master’s voice instead of our own to-do list.

—from the book Who Does He Say You Are? Women Transformed by Christ in the Gospels by Colleen Mitchell

The God of the heavens and the earth wants you too to remember who it is that he says that you are. Very likely, I do not know your story. Yours may read a lot like mine, or it may be altogether different. But I do know this: wherever you are in that story, God desires to draw near to you and remind you who you are. In the midst of your cracks and suffering and hard places and pain, he has a love letter to offer you.

—from Who Does He Say You Are? Women Transformed by Christ in the Gospels by Colleen Mitchell