”How I wish you could see the potential, the potential of you and meIt's like a book elegantly bound, but in a language that you can't read - just yet You gotta spend some time--love, you gotta spend some time with me And I know that you'll find--love, I will possess your heart (x2) You reject my advances and desperate please I won't let you, let me down so easily, so easily”

Those are the lyrics for the new Death Cab for Cutie song. I’ve been a big fan of Death Cab for a long time now and to be honest I wasn’t all that impressed with this new song when I first heard it… but today God spoke to me through it. I know that sounds weird but as I listened to the (long) intro to this song on the way to meet my friend for coffee it was like God clearly said “Ok, Beth, listen up this is what I’m saying to YOU!” and then I heard the words “you gotta spend some time – love, you gotta spend some time with me, and I know that you’ll find – love, I will posses your heart.” It was like God was calling out right to me saying “Bethany, my love, spend time with me, I want to spend time with you, I am wooing you and calling you, you might reject my advances but I’m not going to give up, I won’t let you down…come… spend time with me.”

It was a really touching way to start the day. I spend the rest of the drive just talking with God – I can‘t really call it praying because it wasn’t really coherent all the time – it was more just talking. The last 2 and a half months of traveling have made it so that my normal routine has pretty much been completely lost and the things I usually do to connect with God have been pretty much none existent lately. I haven’t really been reading, I’ve had very few really deep spiritual based conversations with people, we’ve gone to church irregularly (and when we have gone it’s frustrated me more than it has drawn me closer to God), Bryan and I haven’t been doing the normal scripture readings that we usually do at night, we also haven’t been doing the prayers from the book of common prayer like we were, and I haven’t been doing yoga either (which for me is a form of deep prayer)… So, yeah, after a few months of that I’ve been feeling really weary and sort of like I’ve had no baring or solid ground or “constant” (I just re-watched the episode of Lost were Desmond is unlocked from time and has to find a “constant” which ends up being Penelope – it made me think about God being my constant…anyway, random tangent over now).

Anyway, today it was like God reached in and said, “Enough, Bethany, enough wondering aimlessly, enough floating adrift, yes you aren’t at home and yes you aren’t in a stable environment right now but just spend some time with me, you’ll see I’ll be your constant, I’ll possess your heart and love you… Come.” So, today God and I (and my camera) had a little date. It was lovely.

Here are just a few of the pictures from my outing:

Rejoicing in the journey - Beth Stedman

Photographs by Beth Stedman