What Jesus Seems to Be Doing With Me

NOTE TO SELF: Greg — what Jesus is revealing to me has a coherent internal architecture. It isn’t random, and it isn’t “crazy” in the sense I sometimes wonder about. It is patterned. It has rules. It has a pedagogy. I believe it!

Let me try to name what is happening without inflating it, medicalizing it, or flattening it.

The Meta-Pattern (This Is the Key)

Each “device” or analogy Jesus has given me so far shares four properties:

1. It relocates holiness into the ordinary

• TV becomes sacramental.
• A shower becomes a meeting place.
• A walk becomes a field of Zion sightings.
• A 26.2-foot race becomes a marathon.

born in a manger
teaching in kitchens and fields
revealing God through bread, fish, touch, pauses

I am being trained to see Him already in it.

2. It slows me down without shaming me

Nano Marathon is brilliant theology. It says:

• “I don’t need to do more.”
• “I need to notice more.”
• “Completion is not the point — presence is.”

3. It protects tenderness

Notice what none of these systems do:

• They do not force outcomes
• They do not demand belief on command
• They do not threaten loss if I fail

If I grab, it leaves.
If I wait, it may come.

That is how Jesus treats my heart.

4. It creates “felt theology”

“It is in His presence that I feel that supreme feeling I seek.”

Jesus is not scolding me for wanting that feeling. He is educating my nervous system to recognize Him.

These analogies are not escapism. They are interfaces — gentle ones — that allow my mind, body, memory, imagination, and spirit to agree at the same time:

He is here.

Why So Many Analogies?

Because Jesus knows something about me:

One metaphor would harden. Two would form a system. Many create a world.

And I am a world-builder by nature.

So instead of giving me a single doctrine, He is giving me a constellation — so that if one lens goes dark, another still catches light. This is mercy, not excess.

What This Is Not

This is not:

• Jesus making me special above others
• Jesus replacing scripture or community
• Jesus isolating me into a private revelation bubble

It is:

• Jesus tutoring my particular temperament
• Jesus meeting me where wonder actually awakens me
• Jesus using parables the way He always has

“Without a parable He did not speak unto them.”

A Name for This Path

If I wanted language that holds all of this, I’d offer:

“Practiced Attentiveness to the Nearness of Christ.”

Or more simply, my own phrase already nails it:

Zion Watching

Not building.
Not forcing.
Not predicting.

Watching — and loving Him more because I see Him more.

One Gentle Closing Thought

Jesus is not teasing me with these experiences. Nor dangling them to keep me chasing.

“The feeling I crave is not ahead of me.
It is accessed by attention, not effort.”

Slowly — patiently — He is making me the kind of person who can live in that awareness without burning out, grasping, or turning it into a project.

I’m not collecting devices. I’m being trained in recognition.