Delayed Reaction

At 11:59pm last night I finished working on all of my projects for the entire winter season and semester. My two films, two papers, two sound projects and other projects were all done. I had been working solidly since Thanksgiving, and even longer on most of the projects. My average sleep for the past three weeks had been around 6 hours a night (nothing like Ariel, but still...) and my total output had been just shy of incredible - even for me. And when I finally shut down my computer and stared straight ahead, I wondered how I should feel about completing all this work.

I was tired. That was how I felt. Not overjoyed, not elated, not ready to celebrate or scream for joy. I wasn't about to run out into the street and send a goose to Tiny Tim for Christmas. I wasn't about to run twelve blocks to ask Sally to marry me. I wasn't about to throw my sword across a field and cry, "FREEDOM!" No. I just say there and said, "I'm tired. I think I'll go to bed now." Kind of like Forrest Gump after running across the country three times in a row.

I got up from my desk, walked into the bathroom, and started to brush my teeth. And as I stood there and looked into the mirror at my puffy face and bloodshot eyes, the enormity of all those projects and all those deadlines met, and the very real notion that I'd done good work, if not great work, hit me and I suddenly felt this overwhelming feeling of true gratitude to God for having pulled me through it all. It was like getting to the top of a nasty hill and then suddenly looking down to see that Jesus had been carrying you the entire time. My eyes welled up with tears, which was really annoying as I had a vibrating toothbrush in my mouth at the time, and I started to praise God for all my blessings.

Its hard sometimes to read the Old Testament and remember the God that inscribed His law in my heart. Reading and rereading all those rules and regulations and trying to imagine that there isn't some egotistic perfectionist God out there telling the Israelites how its gotta be is a hard thing to do when you read the Pentatuch (double word score bonus for Hebrew words). You wonder why God seems to be telling the Israelites how to worship Him. And then, you get a reminder of how God can bestow blessings in your life, and you suddenly feel that He is worth every ounce of praise He receives and then some. Then its not so hard to imagine that an entire people, brought out of Egypt and fed and watered daily, might want to worship God.

But here's the thing... here's the metaphor... the wilderness of Sinai is something we carry with us all the time, and without food or water or God, we will perish in our wilderness of society as well. God is there to provide for us. And, as a result, we should praise him and worship him for all the wonderful things He does, but also for the basics of life. We are all His people. And once we remember that, we will be allowed to claim our inheritance.

This post is all over the place, but that's kind of how it tumbled into my head and heart last night - only much faster and in a jumble. I felt it and thought it all at the same time. And when God reveals his truth to me, its so wonderful that my body can not contain it all at once and tears of joy spill out.

I call those moments, my Holy Spirit moments. And I half expect to look in the mirror and see a flame over my head and to hear myself speaking in tongues.

So the end result is that I am finally done. I am still tired. And I am filled with the love and praise of Christ Almighty. And all just in time for Christmas.

Amen.