Just GO!

Scientists, explorers, entrepreneurs with lots of capital. These are the people who "boldly go where no man has gone before," to quote Star Trek (which all great philosophers everywhere always do). You and me, we probably won't do anything in our lifetimes that the outside world would describe that way. That's ok.

Sometimes for me, though, just doing the bit that's in front of me feels like I'm taking up that epic challenge. I feel like it's ME on that Starship Enterprise, hurtling into the black hole of the wide-open universe. I become afraid. I want to turn back. I'm seeking God's will, because I know that's the only safe place in said black hole, but I'm not always sure I've found it.

When I think about the astronauts who allow themselves to be flung into space, too far from earth for any of us to save them should they experience any problems, my stomach tightens. I simply cannot imagine it. I am not made of the same stuff. It's just not in there, folks. Wouldn't it be lovely to understand, to finally know fully, down to our toes, that the God of the black hole of uncertainty is holding us up. He's not holding the ship, he's holding US. I can't fall. I'm in the palm of His hand.

Psalm 139:5-6 puts it this way: "You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." (Holy Bible, New International Version.)

As I walk the path in front of me, prayerfully seeking His will at each and every turn, I can rest assured that His grace covers my mistakes. He has me. Always has, always will.

Wake Me Up Now!

I was in the grocery store just now when a popular song came on over the intercom, washing all of us gray-haired shoppers looking for cereal out in a tide of smoothly-delivered angst. Very emotional song. Gist of it is that the singer wants to be awakened "when it's all over." I've got, regrettably, some very bad news for him. None of us is getting that opportunity. While everyone else wondered what else would make that recipe "pop," or where the Metamucil could be found,  I listened to the blamed lyrics, every word tapping the sore places in my heart.

He sang that he wants to be wiser and older when said awakening happens, if you please. Again, no dice. We don't get to skip what we got right now, and we will have to make do with whatever we've got in our current psychological toolbox.

All of this pop culture/grocery store intercom philosophy was flooding over me in the wake of some serious, heavy-duty theological ponderings and readings I had dipped my toes into just before hopping in my red beetle and jumping down to Ingle's in a few scoots (I had ADHD back when they called it "blatant lack of self-discipline"). I was wrestling with some very deep concepts, wondering how to integrate them into my spiritual survival chest.

The crux of the matter is that we all came from God and we all have the opportunity to return to Him, if we accept the sacrifice His son Jesus Christ made on the cross. We have unique, individual destinies on this earth and we can chuck everything to learn what they are and lean into Him to see them fulfilled in His power. All of the intricacies of spiritual warfare and the deeper things of the Spirit will be fed to us bit by bit, as we are able to digest them, by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I want to jump to Ph.D. in the spiritual realm while extending the commitment of a preschooler. Lord, please help me to do better!

If I want to serve God with absolute abandon and complete commitment to His purposes in my life, I will have to expect that there are concepts and secrets that I'll only learn as I diligently pursue Him. The Bible does not say that those who seek Him find Him when they look for Him in some things, some of the time. What it DOES, however, say is this: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13, Holy Bible, New International Version.)

That means EVERY day, in ALL things, with ALL I have ALL of the time. Wake me up in the morning after I've rested well all night. I don't want to wait until it's "all over" and I've missed what I'm here for!

A Lot of "A Lots"

There's a t-shirt/cottage industry that sprung up around, I think it was, a woman who called in to the Ellen DeGeneres Show. She said she loved Jesus but she drank a little. I have always cringed when people mention it because I don't like to use His precious name so casually! However, the point made by this simple statement has resonated with me for YEARS. I usually substituted cussing for drinking when applying it to myself in my head, since I essentially gave up social drinking twenty-five years ago.

The point of the silly little joke gone wild/universal isn't lost on me and, sadly, has applied to my life in more ways than one. Except for the "a little" part. I find myself doing certain things "a lot"...things that seem to negate the "I love Jesus" part.

I'm a little down today because of my big mouth. I can't seem to get the voice in my head that criticizes others to come into line with what I know the Bible teaches about love. I am so saddened by this fact. I have deep hurts that come raging to the surface with little provocation and vicious statements roll off of my tongue. It's not good. It's not godly. It's got to go.

I love the line from a song recorded by  Chris Rice  that goes something like this: "Freedom from myself will be the sweetest rest I've ever known." I think he was talking about when we reach heaven. Can I ever relate. I've got other strongholds that have got to be shown the door, too, but this issue of my mouth, it is serious business.

I have done some thinking on the topic and want to encourage anyone else who is fighting the same battle to embrace the scripture that tells us to take every thought captive. If we keep our minds continually on God and His work, His perspective, His unfailing love for us and others, it will be much harder to be vicious verbally. If our thoughts turn dark, we can make the conscious effort to hand our minds to God for Him to sort them out and set them right. Our thoughts lead our emotions, which lead our mouths. Ultimately our actions will go down into the ditch, too! Good news! They can come up out of the ditch. Thank you, Lord, that You take me by the hand, brush off the filth of my sins of resentment, anger, rage and bitterness and set me on a level path where my ankles will not turn,. Thank you, Lord, for never giving up on me, even when I want to give up on myself!

What Do You See?

I took that photo just above Telluride, Colorado about three weeks ago. The sheep gathered in that pasture were oblivious of me and my little iPhone with the pink case. That device, however, captured a beautiful moment in time. The snow on the mountains in the background is like a lace doily. The animals in the foreground look so peaceful. And they were!

Sometimes what we see through the lens of our camera is even more special than we realize as we hurry to capture it. I remember when I took multiple pictures of my nephews and niece by a stream, only to discover a few minutes later as we were walking home that a ray of light was coming down toward each child, as if to touch them. Three separate rays.

I wonder if our everyday life experiences are exactly the same. This morning I asked God if He would speak to me today. He seemed to answer that He is in "every turning leaf, every butterfly swarm." I saw a butterfly swarm a couple of hours later at a spot where my son had seen them a couple of days ago. Gorgeous, splashy monarch butterflies, bursting up from in front of my vehicle like flying flowers.

I wonder if we sat still longer, journaled more, prayed and reflected longer and with more purpose, if the smallest of our day-to-day encounters and life happenings would begin to look like the pieces of a life puzzle or the bricks in the foundation of a beautiful life that God is constructing for us? I wonder if we would cooperate better in the building process if we acknowledged this? I think we would see a shadow of the bigger picture if we tried to tune in to Christ.

Posting the following disclaimer is as natural as breathing to me. I have been told that writing is my God-given gift. I want to give it back to Him, and that's why I write this blog. I am a ridiculous work-in-progress. I am horrifically off the mark quite often. Even worse, I will start my day in the Spirit, only to find myself in the middle of a temper tantrum that frightens me! I do believe in sanctification and maybe, at nearly fifty-one years of age, I am making some progress. I've been humbled by life enough over the last several years to feel that I have a shot at it at least! Please know that I do not write about the Christian life because I feel qualified to. Not at all. It is because I do not know how not to. Jesus is all I know.

Pathways

Pathways and lanterns. Two design elements you'll find strewn throughout my home. You could jam the two metaphors and you'd have me hankering for a light for my path. I see a warm, lit lantern as a type of lighthouse, too. While I don't decorate with lighthouses, I enjoy looking at images and artwork featuring them. They show up in in nearly every type of coastline scenario you could imagine. I've seen them pictured amid a riot of flowers in my favorite colors, the sea idling beneath them in the glistening sun. I've seen them portrayed as rocks standing tall as wildly churning waters nearly engulf them. I've seen them proud and plain, elegant and New England to the hilt, or small and humble vestiges of a by-gone era nestled near a fading ocean, looking lonely as evening draws near. There is a lot you can do with all three of these images. They evoke joy and sorrow simultaneously as I arrange, add candles, tilt my head and sigh or run my hand longingly across a statuette or framed print. I often swallow hard and gather the skirts of my heart to move back into what can be a mundane, colorless day.

So where are we without dreams? Where are we without that one thing or things that makes our hearts beat faster, makes us feel full without food? We were made for passion, created for adventure. Our souls crave diversity, open to creativity, breathe in those things we are best at, those things that add panache to the song that is our daily life. God programmed us that way! We are His masterpieces, after all, the crowning achievement in His creation. His sons and daughters.

If you love nature, take pictures. If you enjoy poetry, write some! If your heart is drawn to children as a moth to a flame, volunteer at church and nurture some! Make something happen. People who are perpetually unfulfilled have something to hide. That something is the steadfast act of ignoring their very design, of boxing their potential, of caging their beating heart so tightly it seems to gurgle rather than pulse. They've become the masters of excuse, plodding from duty to duty, hating life and failing to understand why!

If you don't know what God is calling you to do with the rest of your life, get on your face before Him and find out. Pull out a journal and write down what He says. Then. Do. It. All. You'll never live another unfulfilled moment.

Fresh Water

Fresh water. A spring bubbling up from deep in the earth. Metaphors for the new life in Christ. We make it all so complicated when it really boils down to this, this idea of the unpolluted life. Jesus nailed our sin to the cross and He also clears the springs of our hearts when we invite Him into our every day. How does He do that? When we offer, to the best of our ability, our whole life to Him, He directs the things we read, what we say, who we listen to and what we watch. The whole of our existence flows in the river of His purity and love. It buries our past sins, our guilt, our shame and our wounds. We rise like the new creatures that we most assuredly are.

Feel you have failed at taking hold of this? So do I. I take heart in the fact that God knows I'm weak, that He knows I bring zero to the table on my own. He loves me anyway. He wants me anyway. Very hard to take in, yet WE MUST! We are not rejected for our failures, for our shortcomings...rather we are justified right in the middle of them. We are given robes of righteousness courtesy of the very high price Christ paid at the cross.

Our enemy spends every moment of every day working to cheat us out of the freedom Christ's sacrifice bought us. He tells us we are not paid for, that we must do, be and achieve more and more to be good enough for God, for His love, for His fellowship. When we finally realize that, as His deeply loved children we are blood-bought saints destined for intimacy with our Father and for a joy and peace-filled soul, then we can move on into every good thing He has planned for us!

Pools

 Wax has memory. When you burn a candle for the very first time, the liquid wax pool at the time the candle is extinguished leaves a decisive ridge. Every time you burn  the candle after that, the melted wax pool will never get larger than the imprint of the first burn. Memory.

If the wax pool is small, no matter how deep it gets, the full potential of fragrance release into the room is never realized. This may seem like a very small matter to you, but to candle snobs, it is very big indeed. I give or throw away candles I cannot smell. I purge them from my existence. They are frustrating reminders of a purchase gone bad.

I wonder if God is frustrated by our own small wax pools of influence? I mean, He created us, He knows our full potential, and He sees those of us who are flopping and floundering and drowning our purposes in tiny wax pools of doubt, indecision and fear. Some (not me) are working very, very hard. They are boldly making inroads into their destinies, using all of the natural talents God gave them. Some of those people are still burning small pools. "Wait a minute," you're now thinking. "I'm one of those people. I am accomplished. I am using my talents. I haven't hidden ANY in the ground." Good for you. Good for you.

I've come to realize that the large, fragrant wax pools come from vessels that are emptied out spiritually. Poured out on God's altar. In-filled daily with His anointing. Goes lots deeper than musical ability, writing talent, superior intellect. It has to do with being fully yielded to the Spirit. Trust me, I am only dipping my toe into these waters yet. I'm fully aware that I have, figuratively speaking "miles to go before I sleep," as Frost wrote in his epic poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." I'm a very tiny babe in these woods. I don't even want this emptying out and filling in to the degree that is necessary. I'll admit it intimidates my selfish flesh to a degree I cannot begin to describe.But I want to want it and I pray for the Spirit to make it my passion. To change me to the degree that I do not recognize myself at all. Only He can. Only He can. But it's possible. I know it is because I would not feel the unmistakable call if it were not. No.