Insight from fruitsnacks

Because the God we have is the God of everyday life and not just the God-of-high-and-low-points, the other day He gave me a small revelation in a minute bag of fruit snacks. I'm not sure why He did this, but He IS the God of the small and He is the God of the large--so He can choose to do this kind of thing I suppose.

Normal fruitsnack packs have a variety of four or five flavors, we all know this right? Some colors desired...others not, some flavors more popular among women, some more fancied by men. Some more by children, some more eaten by young adults. And the other day, for the first time in my life, I found an entire fruit snack pack with 11 pieces of only grape-flavored snack morsels. This has never happened to me before. So I quickly opened the hyvee-branded treat and enjoyed every piece instead picking and choosing between my favorites and my not-so-much tiny candies.

Before I get ahead of myself, I should of prefaced this with the fact that I never eat fruit snacks, I mean practically NEVER. But for some strange, unexplainable reason, the college I attend offers free treats in a common room to study. I cannot explain truths out of my grasp; I am humble enough to admit that I cannot fathom why there were little fruit snack packs in the college den at the same time I was a few days ago. EXCEPT that God knew I would be hungry physically and open spiritually enough to want to hear His voice enough to listen. This is what He said: I want you, and I want all of you. You believe that there are pieces of you that cannot be desired by anyone, that there are parts of your heart that are more favored than others. But I am not the God of pieces, I am the God of ALL. I AM. I have given ALL of me to you. Not just a mixed flavor pack. The world wants to pick and choose of you, but I am not that way. The world sees the good parts and the bad parts of you, but I am not that way. I view EVERY piece of you as wanted and as desired and as my favorite flavor.

I was blown away by this for multiple reasons. The first one being that I can't believe God just spoke through a Hyvee-branded unhealthy candy. Not only did He just say hello, or hey nice talking to you, He filled me so my heart and my cup overflowth. How can a distant God do this? He can't. The God we serve is not far off. He IS everywhere. He IS in the everyday life. And He IS in love with each and every part of us. According to Him, there are no undesired flavors within us.

To confirm this revelation a fellow, young college girl entered the den for a snack pack, and quickly expressed her "dang" when she could not find varied packs.

The enemy wants us to believe that "if I only this part of me was more like him or her, than God would love me more."

I am guilty of such thought. I am guilty of the accusation towards myself and towards others. However, the God of I AM was not, is not, and will not be this way. Am I claiming that we are perfect and should not try to better ourselves ever? Not at all. But God did give me a revelation about loving myself more (as He does) so that I can better love the people within His creation more (as He does).

Now this entry was written all on a whim, quickly, on the tip of a swaying branch, at the end of a fork in the road, so if God's revelation was not clarified correctly I apologize. The only thing I truly know to be true is that I am (and You are) 11 of God's favorite flavor of snack pack candy.

And he does not exclaim: "Dang!" at his beautifully delicious creation.

You have found me Wanting.

I dreamt last night that I was dreaming. An abstract place, dreaming within a dream, sleeping within sleep. Claire de Lune played distractingly somewhere within this place and I went to find the melody. Because within our most secret hearts is an eternal labyrinth--and we can be encountered within it, on a quest for beauty. It is a ceaseless, persistent desire, engrossing us further within the maze. With riveting hopes to land upon the treasure of perfectly serene splendor, we paint, and we doodle, and we write, and we play music, and we read, and we dream of existent and fantasized wishes, and we express our longing through appreciated, apparent arts. And they are untouchable.

In this way, in this pattern of concealment and discovering, in this joyous, secretive mystery, beauty is God. We can listen or perceive or glimpse the presence of an art so overwhelming and intoxicating. Spasmodically, the revelation of Him is an internal explosion of nirvana, till the individual can no longer be. Yet, periodically, the absence or the striving and hunt for Him, is a deeply humbling break-down; our intrinsic needs grow hungry, and willowy without his face or his heart or some detection of His presence, or just a dream within a dream of Him.

Lord, I press on in this sleep-within-sleeping labyrinth, wanting.

Maybe

Perhaps you are in proximity. Perhaps you are not. Perhaps you are on the other side of the world. Geographically. Somewhere serving the Lord, sleeping in a mice-sized-termite-invested hammock. Or maybe you are in your apartment wondering about the future He promised. Maybe you are playing your guitar in the rain because sometimes the sky's sadness needs someone to share it with. Perhaps you are taking a swig of Coca Cola in a glass bottle because everyone knows it tastes so much better in the bottle. Maybe you are questioning the probability that our world moves and turns and flips in a series of cycles, randomly, sporadically, singing the same song but in a different key. Perhaps your head has just reunited with its pillow friend, and sleep is a swinging and whirring lullaby away. Or maybe you are doing something dull, a hated responsibility, like reinstalling printer ink. Perhaps you are reconnecting with a person you realized you never had truly connected with in the first place. Maybe you are out walking beautifully aimless.

and maybe, like me, you are pondering your love of Christmas music while dependently staring at the night sky.

I suppose it doesn't matter what either of us are doing.

Maybe I just thought whatever it was, should have been happening here tonight.