I turn to Five Minute Friday to see what the prompt is for this week. “Connect,” it says.
I scroll down the sidebar for some unknown reason and see an ad for some Amazon books. The one that catches my eye bears the title, “The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God through Prayer, Wisd…” (emphasis mine). The rest of the title is hidden till clicked, and I don’t want to click and get connected to another new link in another new chain, which might lead me to another, then another, then another.
But isn’t that what I have already done? Didn’t I interrupt a lovely time of quiet and beautiful connection with God to connect elsewhere, “just to see…”?
There are so many places we can connect, and now I’m not referring to the internet. But I wonder how many of them are like a Celtic knot of extension cords, all plugged into one another in an endless mess of tangled connections, with perhaps only one of the bunch (if any at all) plugged into the source of power.
The Source of power—that’s where I need to connect, and stay connected. And in order to do that I’ve got to unplug from other things I’ve hooked up with. This doesn’t mean I’ll deny connection to anyone seeking that same Source. Perhaps I’ll serve temporarily as an extension cord myself. But sooner or later, if I care about the person, I’m going to be pointing them to where they need to get power directly for their own lives and souls, rather than drawing on mine through all my flawed and inadequate connectivity and conductivity.
The funny thing, I know, is that a whole lot of lamps lighting up a room, each connected to the true and ultimate power source have a different kind of connection: they all glow in each other’s light, they show up the best of each other’s features, they add their own unique colors to the light that fills the whole room, and that’s a connection of harmony. It reminds me of A. W. Tozer’s analogy of an orchestra getting well attuned to one another. All those different instruments won’t get that way through trying to match each other’s pitch. But if each gets tuned to the tone of a master tuning fork, then they’ll all play beautifully tuned to each other, free from all off-key dissonance.
Primary connection where it counts, that’s the thing…
I love the image of the room full of lamps: when I was a child I loved the glow of the lighting section in Home Depot — all those lights shining together! Thanks for connecting!
Stacy,
I never (consciously) thought of the store lighting section when I wrote this, but you have reminded me how I loved all those lights shining there when I was a kid, too! Thanks for visiting and commenting!
Love your reflections here! The analogies you share are powerful and it’s so true that our primary connection must be to God. If we have that sorted, then we can connect with others in a healthy way.
“In a healthy way” = key prase, Lesley. In recent years I have come to identify the unhealthiness in certain human connections, and I realize this discernment has been a direct (or sometimes indirect), result of connecting with God. That fellowship puts all relationships in a healthy order of priority, too, doesn’t it? Thanks for adding the good thought.
“But sooner or later, if I care about the person, I’m going to be pointing them to where they need to get power directly for their own lives and souls, rather than drawing on mine through all my flawed and inadequate connectivity and conductivity.”
This hit me like lightning! Truly we can be examples and even mentor some, but they cannot fully experience the Lord through us…and especially with our own human condition. I really enjoyed your post.
Also visiting from FMF. Have a wonderful weekend.
Yes, Kelly, I think we forget this often in ministering to others because of the constant pressure to do, do, do (it ourselves) in the work-ethic, enterprising spirit of our time. We mean well, but that doing can sometimes, maybe often, actually get in the way of God working directly in people’s lives, and them connecting directly to Him and allowing Him to do it.
So glad you visited here! God’s rich blessings on your week!
Love the word pictures here.
Laurie,
Don’t you especially like Tozer’s? I do. But the others that came to me as I free-wrote I will keep for my own reminder also.
Did the photo illustration make you laugh? It did me, several times. My closest approach to making a Celtic knot! But the tangle speaks better anyhow of the tangle I get into when I get waylaid in my connecting all over the place and lose close connection with God.
Hope you have a beautifully blessed 2017, friend!
Love this and the celtic knot imagery. I can’t tell you how often I feel fragmented, and as you so graphically point out it’s because I am disconnecting from that to which I am already connected. My mother and I were on the phone the other day, and she said, “Oh, I need to answer the phone.” But she was already on the phone w/ me! It was annoying, frankly (and I adore my mother)! So I had to wait over five minutes, until she reconnected with me! How often, though, Sylvie, do I do that to God? Wow. I need to go connect w/ him right now, in fact.
Thanks for your deep wisdom.
Love
Lynni
Now there’s another good word picture/analogy, Lynni! Glad you shared it.
I have been thinking a lot lately about exactly what distracts me and makes me all fragmented, and why it happens. I am finding a lot of factors can be involved–and coming to reaslize it’s sometimes other people with motives that may not be for my growing stronger in connecting with God, even though they might outwardly seem so. Of course, to reach these insights I needed the uninterrupted connecting with God, at least for a time! Hope you get such time and insights in your trip away–if not before!