When God has something to say to us, He can get our attention any way He chooses.
And sometimes it’s comical!
I was standing at my kitchen counter. My eyes were on my dog as he ate, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I can't tell you what I was thinking about. One hundred different things I'm sure.
I reached for my vanilla-flavored chewable vitamin and popped it in my mouth. One bite told me I had made a terrible mistake.
Beef, not vanilla, assaulted my senses. My salivary glands went into overdrive as the grittiness filled my mouth. I dashed to the kitchen sink and spit out as much as I could. It was buried in the deep crevices of my molars, and with each swipe of my tongue, my stomach lurched.
Afraid of losing my breakfast, I tried to dig the remnants out with my fingernails, but my attempts were futile ... and my days of not throwing up were set back to zero.
My mistake you may wonder? I inadvertently picked up my dog’s vitamin rather than my own. And it was from this lapse of being fully present God spoke to me (after I finished cleaning out my mouth, rinsing the kitchen sink, had a good laugh, and sent a text to Robert telling him what I'd done).
The richness of being fully present and engaged with the world around us is a priceless gift God offers every waking moment. How often do we receive this gift with open eyes, ears, minds, and hearts? For myself, I would have to say not very often. As thoughts of the day, thoughts of the future, to-do lists, and anxieties race through my mind, I become blind and deaf to what's going on around me.
So, with the holidays upon us, I wanted to remind myself and all of you what a gift being fully present and engaged can be to ourselves and those nearest to us.
There are three different blessings God spoke to me, and I will be sharing each one in a separate blog post over the next three days. I hope you'll follow along and discover for yourself the gifts of presence.