Prepare the Way

The phrase “prepare a place” has been surfacing repeatedly for months.  I have spent years, it seems, preparing…making ready a home for my husband, nurseries for babies, meals and rooms for family and guests, clean laundry for the week, a dwelling where beauty and care were offered and the doors of which would be opened to welcome in extended family, friends, and strangers.

I have also prepared for dreams.  I have explored areas of life I’ve been drawn to…notebooks filled with ideas of things to be written or created out of paper or fabric, with paint or beads.  Many of them have been made.  I have stacks of journals with notes of things I have read or learned or noticed or that I want to write about.   The time has come for many of them to have been written and shared.  Preparing has made me ready when the time came.

And I have been aware of preparing my heart.  I heard someone say once, “Is your heart a place where Holy Spirit would feel at home?”   It was kind of a sobering question.  As a creative, I love having stuff around that inspires me or that I see beauty in, and usually there are remnants, here and there, of projects-in-process.  Sometimes those need to be packed back away for a season to focus on something that needs more attention in the now.  But my heart can also get cluttered, and that can be a little harder to see.  What might I have it filled with that leaves little room for the Holy Spirit to move around in?

The other day I heard a guy say, “Faith isn’t effort, it’s surrender.”  I, too, have learned that it’s trusting in the goodness of God, even when I cannot see where the road is leading.  It is believing He is at work, even when the fog hasn’t cleared and the mess is still evident.  It is peace that He has a plan and is not absent from me.  It is calm that He will come through and provide His best for me.  It is a letting go to the reality that He is caring, never forsaking me.  It isn’t always easy and it has taken both small steps and watching for how He came through.

But those truths haven’t been sown by accident.  I have tried to prepare for the life I desired to live and the God I want to have as my steadfast companion.  I have carved out time for quiet and listening so I could learn what His voice sounds like.  I have made room for Him (as is needed in every relationship) by making a priority to have time available and attention given to what He would say to me.  And I have intended to respond when He speaks.  I better be sure I have time to follow instead of having my own schedule so full that He has no room. 

And part of that goes back to the word “prepare.”  In the kitchen, the word “pare” is to trim off an outside, excess, or irregular part of a fruit or vegetable.  It is removing the unnecessary or undesirable parts.  To pre-pare is the cutting away ahead of time for the greater outcome of the recipe.   In my life, it is making room, expecting that He will speak and wants to be the guide in the journey and dance of my life, making the feast all He envisioned it to be.  The cutting away has never left me with less.