Come Apart or Come Apart

By Alma Newitt 

Recollection is a wonderful word.  It speaks of a state of integration when the bits and pieces of our fragmented beings are “re-collected” and there is a sense of greater wholeness or oneness with God. 

All of ordinary life seems calculated to scatter us – the dirty house that always needs cleaning, the ringing telephone, the broken down car, the crying child, the TV news alert, and on and on, all at once demanding our attention. 

If we are living in the shallow, heady self, harried by people and events and our reactions to them, it’s all too much and we come apart at the seams.  It is then we must take our shattered state and return home for repair.  We are not like Humpty Dumpty who could not be put together again.  There is one waiting who will take the broken pieces of our selves and make us whole again.

Coming apart to God from time to time is essential for our daily spiritual health.  John Wesley’s mother had so many children she couldn’t get away, but at certain periods of the day she would put her apron over her head, and her children wouldn’t bother her because they knew she was communing with God.  Jesus himself rose  early in the morning and spent whole nights in prayer. If the author of our faith found this necessary, how much more do we need to come apart so we don't come apart from Him?