Lingering with Jesus: Redux

As I lean into an unhurried morning prayer time, I realize how I want to spend my summer. I think my next few months could be well spent lingering with Jesus.  What would it be like, instead of rushing headlong into each next thing, to lag behind just a bit? To loiter, delay, dawdle and hang out with the One who loves me more than I can imagine? I dwell with this particular thought. 

With the Easter season ending and spring gliding into summer, I am acutely aware how the many transitions in the world around me echo the shifts in my personal life. For the past several weeks I have been contemplating the space such shifts create and am grateful to two wise women, Suzanne Guthrie (edgeofenclosure.org) and Jan Richardson (paintedprayerbook.com), who have fed my reflections.

Now, as I look out my window, I see the tree that keeps me company most mornings while I pray. And as I practice noticing the tree, I am suddenly aware of the space between. The space between one leaf and the next. The space between a twig and a branch. The space between the gathering of green that opens to the cityscape beyond. And unexpectedly I see Jesus there, in the space between. 

Of course! Jesus, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, must also be all the in-between. Between every leaf on every tree. Between every blade of grass and each cloud. In the space between each beat of each bird’s wing and the infinity between each beat of each of our hearts.

I breathe in the fragrance of the caressing breeze and linger with abandon. I am looking forward to this summer.



photo credit Anne E. Kitch