Inflow/Outflow by Melissa Hurst

The background of this Guest Post by Melissa Garber Hurst, PA:

I suspect that some of you following this blog are thinking that all this time for listening for God is for those of us in the ” second half of life”  because we have time.  I would have been thinking the same thing! 

So today I focus on Melissa Garber Hurst, a 30-something wife,  mom of four and a home business owner in south central Pennsylvania. 

It has been my unique joy to journey with Melissa and see the evidences of of personal and spiritual growth.  She is an encouragement to me in my own journey. 

Melissa’s time (and amount thereof)  for “listening” and her spiritual rhythms will be different than mine, but we each need to find our own pace.  I have seen her doing it and I am blessed!

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Winter/Spring 2008:  excerpt from  “Sacred Sisters”  introduction: 

“We come together in a common search for God through learning disciplines that will guide our lives and open the soul to God who is already searching for us…These disciplines will help us to seek and find God and guide us in making every element of our ordinary lives holy.  Sacred Rhythms, Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation, is the focus of our meditation and reflection . ”

These  familiar words greeted us each week as five of us “met” by phone, connected from around the country.  We  read, meditated, journaled and shared our thoughts each week, learning from each other as we PAID ATTENTION to God’s activity in our lives.  Here we meet God in new ways and come to understand who He is.  This is community!

That summer, we complied some of our writing and created a Creative Memories Digital book which we entitled “Sacred Sisters.”  This post from Melissa is from that little book:

Melissa Hurst, PA Paying Attention

“As I sit by the pond, I can hear the water flowing into the overflow pipe . . . it’s a beautiful steady rushing sound. I find it interesting that I hear lots of water leaving the pond, but the water level stays the same. Laws of nature tell me there is an unseen source of water.

Again God is reminding me that if I expect myself to give to my family and my business then there needs to be a source to fill me if I expect to stay “level.” And that source is Him.

God’s telling me, in fact, that the busier I fill my days, the greater is my need for time with Him. Right now, the busier I am, the less in tune I am with Jesus. It’s as if my to-do list fills all spaces within my mind. I hope to get better at hearing from and connecting with Jesus in the hectic times but until that happens, I need to make more time/set aside more time out of the hectic schedule to connect with Jesus and refuel.