Dictation.

"We are all so ready to go to books, to go to men, to go to ceremonies, to anything
except God. Man will worship God with his eyes, and his arms, and his knees, and his
mouth—with anything but his heart—and we are all of us anxious, more or less,
until we are renewed by grace, to get off the heart-worship of God."

We ask much from sustainability.  We ask it to render itself to our crops, to our packaged goods, to our clothes, to our relationships, to our worship.... to every crevace and concept that we interact with. But often when it rests in our palms, we find no purpose for it. 

Just the other day I was rendered to my own defeat. Not by some worldly force or viral strain, but by a 72 year old woman named Nan. She meant no ill will. Rather, she simply spoke truth, wrapped in a blanked of prophecy that heated my excuses to a point of combustion. Oy vey, I recompsed for it. Indeed I did. 

I'm consistently on the go. I'm perpetually alert as to the why i'm always going, and the where, though perhaps not so much the purpose, and/or picture. I lack the requisite vision for such a task. For eyes are always pointed straight ahead, to the next thing the next challenge, not too terribly concerned with what lay at the margins of my sight. Unless, preytell, there is a obstacle there that could cause me to fall. Our perpherals always increase in the presence of danger, and a heightened awareness results in quicker reflexes for able bodies. 

Though this is rarely analogous to our spiritual reflexes. When we lose our peripherals to the movements of the spirit, it becomes wieldy to persistently neglect everything that is needful to the eternal well-being. Yet if we sustain down that tunnel of focus for more than a moment, we find that it becomes cavernous and lonely. Our cognizance is mired by the absence of a presence, and our senses quickly recrudesce to a recollection of the familiar. 

It's supposable, then, that the remarkable drop of prophecy that Nan imposed to me was not entirely transcendental in its complexity, for perhaps the more masterful element was the timing of when it  transposed. There is something unearthly about being the recipient of well-timed wisdom. For when delivered in the appropriate context, nary is it limited to the bounds of it's passive purpose, it becomes a stirrer of a man's soul. 

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children" - Deuteronomy 4:9

First, you must take care, and maintain your soul, Or these things will depart from your soul. 

Nan convicted me that I had indeed befallen a false persuasion in regards to my undertakings. In my thoughts, such work was fulfilled, an exercise pleasing to God, but in honestly of heart, was great a folly. A fully realized heart is not empty in purpose, as I have recently attested much in prayer. She reminded me of a duty I avow to to not simply perform positive tasks, but to recognize that for every movement of the physical is also a spiritual exercise. It's not enough to to simply serve, for misunderstood purpose can wield ill-intent, if lacking distinguishment in love.  A task that stands above, yet alone. So much of the work I undertake trended towards the purpose of the effort, and lacked the equivalent spiritual understanding. Spurgeon writes, “Never bring to God one duty stained with the blood of another. As much as lieth in you, give to each distinct duty its due proportion."

The proportions of my efforts cannot be defined by interjections from other souls. Influenced yes, but not defined.  For those definitions I must find in Christ. I am responsible, though, for the allocations of those duties. In 1st Corinthians it says, "We have depended on God’s grace, not on our own human wisdom. That is how we have conducted ourselves before the world, and especially toward you." In both deed an in though the machinations of our efforts, what we conduct cannot be expressly unique from the spiritual. 

Being surrounded by people with hearts such as Nan's are what makes my work sustainable. For it's interpretations greater than our own understandings that cultivates rich existence in God. And in these understandings help us reap a harvest exceeding what we say or know.