This is why I love to read. Words allow my mind to create images ... images that are all mine ... yet inspired by the writer. When I read a horror novel, I find that I am much more frightened than when I see a horror movie. The images in my mind can be worse than a film maker can create. But, I will allow myself to read horror novels and I refuse to watch most horror films. Explain that? I can't.
There are a few authors that write in such a way that thrills my mind. Calvin Miller is one of those writers. I am reading "Into the Depths of God" right now and I can only read a few pages before my mind is taken away and I am no longer reading words on a page, but am experiencing a moment between me and God.
"...so huge, so beautiful, so vast. It is what I feel each time I encounter God. I lie down to sleep, but do not pray "the Lord my soul to keep." Instead, I stalk a greater immensity in a near nightly ritual of euphoria. His blessings swarm about me in a wonderful lightness of being. It is an odd insomnia sponsored by sheer joy. My mind at first begins splashing through some tiny rivulet of God's grace. Gradually the stream grows ... and Gloria in excelsis! I am in an ocean too wide to measure, too deep to fathom. I am deliriously adrift on the sea of his endless being. Yet I always step out into this ocean from the tiny beachhead of my heart. I am amazed that in the center of my shallow tidal soul I have such immediate access to the vast oceans of his presence." (pg. 14-15)
I have probably read that paragraph 8 times. Each time I get lost in it and I go no further. I shut my eyes and allow myself to be set adrift in that endless sea. God is so big and yet He invites me to come close to Him.
Tonight the television is silenced and I'm crawling under the covers with words ... words that thrill my soul and inspire my heart. I am tempted to take a highlighter with me because I want to be able to find my favorite words again someday, but I think that I shall simply read and worship tonight. The vastness of the God who is found within the depths of my soul.
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