It’s stormy today, the weather and my heart.

When the winds of change rustle and riffle my spirit, I try, no, I force myself to remind my heart of what matters most.

I pull out an old journal with a prayer I scribbled eighteen months ago, written hastily as the words overtook me, my own Psalm 37, words that I imagined God speaking right to me:

You spend too much time thinking about what’s my responsibility and too little time taking care of the responsibility I give you. All you need to do is choose good today, just today, in the life I’ve given you, in the place I’ve laid out for you. Trust me when I tell you that you can delight in me, and that I delight in you…

I will give you your heart’s desire…and I know you aren’t sure what that is, so why don’t you trust me with the heart I’ve created, your heart, and I will give you its deepest desires and holiest passion.

Every moment I want you to commit to me and my way–both in doing good and delighting in me. That is all you do–I will do the rest.

So now I need you to be still. Wait for me to act. Do not fret, for that will distract you from doing good and delighting.

I love you.

Do not forget that I am the One who saved you, who lifted you up, who healed you. I am the One who has brought you to places of safe pasture.

Do good.

Delight.

Wait.

Now, 18 months later, these words are both familiar and fresh. With a twinge of regret I realize how often I worry about God’s responsibilities and care very little about mine. But under the sorrow of my continual and ordinary sin, there is joy in knowing that doing good today, loving well today, delighting in God today,

is everything.

And so today I have stormy, windy, riffled joy.

But joy nonetheless.

Four Months In: how’s your One Word 2011 going?