power and love and self-control

It’s a counted-upon blessing that, at some point when reading the word of God, a particular portion will stand luminously apart with particular significance, almost as if you have never perceived it before, although you have many times, and arrest your thoughts and haul them off for considered reflection for some time. This morning, 2 Tim. 1:7 arrested my thoughts, diverting them even from the delightfully larkish thought that I had slept the entire night and wakened without a migraine.

“for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

I have no very good way to explain why this particular passage was suddenly so particularly meaningful; it was just important because somehow I wanted it–to have it in substance–as one might want a hat or a pen or some quintessential thing unlike any other thing in its class, because that particular thing was the best thing in the world, of all things of all classes.

I can’t write much, because I’m stiff, and writing stiffens and continuous stiffening is a migraine trigger, a fact admittedly within my scope of awareness but which I tend to dismiss when I don’t wish to stop doing something that causes my muscles to stiffen. But I did wish to jot down a quick chronicle of a small but meaningful happy moment of the morning, dusting and bathroom cleaning having been accomplished, and celebrate the beauty of God’s power and love and absolute control, the latter thing being one thing I am vastly relieved is not in my keeping.

And thanks to this bit time spent jotting that is becoming too much jotting, I have a better idea of why power and love and self-control are very good things to desire.