Building One Another - Vol 12 No 23
Dear Friend,
As we launch into a new fall season it's time to ask ourselves, do we practice a Rule of Life that puts first things first?
Devotional writer E. Stanley Jones once told of being in the Himalayan Mountains. “One morning I arose at three o’clock, walked to a mountain peak in The Himalaya to see the sun rise on the most glorious panorama, I suppose, in the world. There as the day began to dawn, we saw arise before our enraptured gaze, within a complete semicircle, twenty peaks, each above twenty thousand feet in height, snow-capped with virgin snow. For half an hour the curtain was lifted and we inwardly worshipped. Then the mists began to fill the valleys between, and the view was gone. Gone? Forever laid up in our green and grateful memories. It was ours forever.
“That is what the Quiet Time does for you. You get up earlier before the mists of worldly happenings close your view of God… After the mists close in, the vision [of God] is there within. You live in two worlds at once. You are a two-dimensional person, drawing sustenance from a world around you to keep you going physically, and then drawing sustenance for God to keep you going spiritually, mentally, physically—totally.”[1]
When we spend regular alone time with our Lord through prayer and Bible reading we enjoy the wonder of the God who loves us and we worship. Then we go about our day. As the mists of activity arise and demand our attention, seeming to obscure our view of God, we carry the memory of our meeting with God throughout the day.
Decide when you will be with your Lord on a regular basis. First things first!
With joy - E. Stanley Ott
[1] E. Stanley Jones, How to be a Transformed Person, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), p. 275.
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