Doing Different Things The Same- Stoking the Lampstand

"Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come and remove your Lampstand from its place." Revelation 2:5

The Lampstand --- the fire--- our passion. When we start out with a dream, we can start out so fresh, so well intended with pure love. Over time, perhaps, politics take their toll. Even success can take its toll so that we begin to rely on the patterns we recognize that created the success rather than the Source from which it is all meant to serve.

This is why New Years is so wonderful. We pointedly take a look with fresh eyes at our goals. But, once a year isn't enough to deal with the barrage of assaults pure and wonderful dreams must withstand. Ego, Insecurity, well intended but faithless council from trusted sources...so many assaults. Neither is once a year enough to check in on the fluid nature of our purpose. This purpose isn't a document that once written can be filed away. It is dynamic and always shifting. In this way, we are intended to maintain a current relationship with its author, always listening, ready to shift, and ready to move. Everything will and must always depend on freshening our time with Him, so that we might remain fresh and new.

And, should we not take this time to realign our faith and intentions, what happens? The erosion occurs, the politics win, soon we are faking it, we are in the rat race of the thing, we are made tired by it... rather than running off of the Fusion-like energy that is created by true passion. And, that... That is how The Lampstand falls, it is when the passion fails.

How do we go back? We've probably all tried to recreate the past without nearly the same result. Maybe it was a holiday memory. Maybe it was a spontaneous picnic that seemed to stop time one summer... But, the next summer when the moment is meticulously recreated feels forced and empty... So how do we "do the things we did at first" and reclaim the passion of life?

I think the question to ask is "how did we do those things?" not necessarily "what exact actions did we do?" Chances are we embarked on that first picnic with a true love for the day, a new recipe, an adventurous heart, or an open mind. So instead of doubling down on the picnic details, perhaps God wants us to enter into the next assignments with those same qualities... To go in unscarred, faithful, and let a God full of promise, promise us new things. If we find our embers dwindling, it's important to go back to the Source, regain our hopeful faith. Regain our unbruised love. Our best and purest passion will be restored to our freshened and fullest purpose.