I've been crazy busy this week, so carving out an hour or two in order to write each morning has been tough.
However, opening the scriptures daily (Lk. 8:43-47 this morning) with a heart ready to hear rich thoughts, makes it hard not to write.
I share this post with all humility, as I am blown away by the sense of spiritual privilege it seems I've accumulated over these years. Much of it I must attribute to meeting a 93 year-old mountain woman, clothed in an handmade, feedsack print dress, just outside a sawdust floored, mountain tabernacle.
As she walked in for the open air service one evening, her felt presence suddenly became enviable to this then 28 year-old new believer, hungry for a new life.
I was strangely drawn to her strong spirit, one easily missed if sight alone sized up her meager frame. She was totally unaware of what I was sensing. What I felt was "abundant Life" within her, The Presence my heart had come to desire.
When I asked for the reason that I might feel such presence, even long before she entered my own personal space, she was at a loss for words.
When pressed for anything she might do differently than the average church attendees with whom I had begun to hang, she hesitantly offered that since age 11, she had annually read the scriptures "cover to cover".
That evening I made a personal committment to do the same, hoping for a similar presence over time.
Though I risk being labeled as overly assuming on my part, my life experience has been such that I now believe inspiration to be like savings in a bank. The spiritual dew that falls fresh on one's mind each morning with a disciplined "walk in the garden of grace" compounds over time. That is an understatement, simply my best attempt at words.
Insights much deeper than the text evolve, as one applies shoeleather to the inspiration gained over time. New every morning, and with each morning more precious. Frankly, the days available are far fewer than we might have originally comprehended in our youth.
Parenthetically and happily, I now find that the numbers quoted for life expectancy in an earlier post were dated. It seems in 2024 in America, it is now 79.9 years, rather than the 73.33 offered from an earlier author. Of course that makes this 75 year-old rejoice!
Still, that's less than 30,000 days.
If for a moment, one assumes that number as a lifetime bank account to draw from, it suddenly feels very limiting! Especially if like me, one is up in years!
However, if we look at it from a different perspective as the number days you have to invest with the benefit of compounding, life becomes quite intriguing. For example, even a dollar a day doubled each day for one month is worth $536,870,912!
What will you do with your next month?
What if there was a way to recieve other world-like inspiration, even practical ideation, that when fully applied daily, one's seed compounds as wisdom, and as well, personal capacity?
Anything now becomes possible!
That soon becomes a wealth far beyond monetary, and soon manifests as fully felt presence by those around you!
Now you possess a wealth not only banked and compounded within your own heart and soul, but transferable generationally as a life giving legacy!
Then comes the overwhelming awareness that your life investment will continue beyond those limited days, compounding to a "1000 generations!"
I can't say that enough, though I had little awareness of such wealth at 28 years of age!
Mind boggling possibilities exist that far exceed material riches! Yet, my experience is that sufficient resources for your personal joy and calling will also find you, as providence comes along side your journey.
Others will seek out such an individual, affording them not only "a life," but one "more abundant" and transcendent!
Now I too must get along with my day, paying it forward on behalf of an elderly lady, whose name I have never known, but the "helm of whose garment" I surely touched!