DEVOTION

Well, we are into week two in our early morning study of Michael Slaughter's book, "Momentum for Life." There are about a dozen of us gathering on Wednesday mornings at 6:30 AM to discuss what we are reading and learning about self leadership. Slaughter says, "if you can't lead yourself, you won't be effective in leading others. Self leadership precedes strategic leadership." While the early hour is just about killing me physically, it truly is time well spent with my sisters and brothers.

Yesterday we talked about devotion. Slaughter defines devotion as, "a focused time of being fully presence to God's presence." I struggle with this understanding on a couple of levels. One, I'm not sure that I have ever been fully presence to God's presence, in fact I'm not sure I could even handle that. Maybe I am lowering the bar, but my hope and prayer is day by day I will learn to become more present to God's presence.

The other point for me is the tension I find in Slaughter’s writing compared to another book I have begun reading, Michael Frost's "Seeing God in the Ordinary: A Theology of the Everyday." While I understand the value and importance of a focused time period of Scripture study and prayer, I don't want my devotion of God to be put into the box of a daily quiet time. My deep desire is to become more aware or to use Slaughter's words, more present to God's presence in every single moment of the day.

There is a recurring line in the movie Vanilla Sky, a haunting voice that implores "open your eyes..." May it be so.

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