Reflection

Simply Thankful

“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.” Colossians 3:15 

This little dove doesn’t have to try to be a dove, she just is. She sat there looking at me as I rounded the corner one morning, just being herself, doing what doves do. I think she can teach me a lesson on just being. Being who God made me and resting in the Holy Spirit. With Christ reigning in my heart I don’t have to work at getting peace, I already have it in Christ. I need to stop working at it and rest in who He is.


There are so many things trying to rule over our hearts these days, things that threaten that peace……but when I close my eyes and know, really know, that Christ is ruling my heart, I feel myself calm, then my heart starts to beat with His. I am seeing turbulent waters grow calm. I think of how He smoothed out the waves that early morning in the boat…..I hear Him say….”Peace, be still……” to the waves and to my heart.

One of the best ways to feel at peace and to honor Him is by giving thanks. When I give Him my gratitude, I acknowledge where the blessings come from. So today I offer up my list of little things, which are really not so little at all.

I have almost made it through the last of my 12 hour shifts this week feeling under the weather. That was my goal, to finish out the week. I have four days off to look forward to. I had a good night’s sleep and that makes the day go much better. I know I will get better, and there are many who won’t. I have food, and I have free fruit and drinks all day here at work. All these little blessings are what some would give anything to be able to give to their children.

I know God appreciates it when we stop and realize how rich we really are.

I think of the conversations I have had in the past two weeks, some with family and some with friends who are going through very hard things. One thing stands out. One very important common denominator.

In spite of everything, they hold fast to their gratitude. They are thankful because they know that with God they have it all, but without Him they have nothing.

The Human Condition

I was swept along by a terrible dust storm last night after fighting through my 12 hour shift with a head cold. I was literally running down the hall trying to make it to the bathroom to the kleenex box by days end. Then, I had to go back in after I got all the way out to my car because I forgot something in the fridge at work. Part of dinner, actually. The picture above is one that was posted all across the country after our “big” storm on July 5th. I found it on a Google search, and it turns out this one came from “The Ecuador Times,” of all places!

Last nights storm wasn’t nearly as bad since I did have visibility on the freeway, but you have to be aware of debris hitting you. Birds were trying to fly and being carried off course….and when I was almost home I noticed a dust cloud, we call them “dirt devils” touching down on the freeway, right in my path. I watched the other cars (Yes, I realize this is faulty logic) as they cautiously drove through, and so I figured it was safe enough for my little bug, which holds the road like a tank. I gripped the wheel, all the while visualising my bug and me being sucked up into the vortex like Dorothy.

Once on the other side of that, the rain started along with the wind……along with a healthy amount of lightning striking all around. Meanwhile, I had used the last of my Kleenex and was resorting to my sleeve to catch drips….Ughhhh!

I looked to my left off the freeway and noticed smoke. I followed it down to ground level and it led to flames which were shooting through the roof of a house! I could see them even from the freeway. I assume it was started by the lightning. I could see the lights of Emergency vehicles already on the scene. I said a silent prayer, hoping that all had gotten out safely.



I was starting to feel like I was driving home in the middle of a disaster movie!

I thought of it all, the little and big things we go through in a day and how much of it would really matter if someone told me I was terminally ill. I also thought that I would probably treat the people in my life better if I were terminal. See things a bit differently.

So many times I feel like a kid trying to work up tears when I commune with God and tell Him I’m sorry for mistreating one of His people. I want to be so sorry that it motivates me to change…..Sackcloth and ashes kind of sorry. The kind that leads to repentance and doesn’t ring hollow.
This is the human condition. The thing we all have in common. And the things that we have in common, also have the power to bring us closer together.
Help me Lord, to treat my friends, my family, myself better. To treat my friends like treasure instead of trash, knowing that each one you brought into my life, you brought there for a reason. Help me to love more. Turn my heart of stone into one of flesh. Help me to treat others as better than myself and to not be afraid to be honest. To myself, and others and You. And help me to remember that we are all weathering storms of some kind, help me to be sensitive to that and keep my heart ready to listen. Amen

Hide and Seek

“God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden… The best gift of the desert is God’s presence… The protective love of the Shepherd gives me courage to face the interior journey.” — Paul E. Miller (A Praying Life)

I almost missed these little guys as I walked by…….Sometimes it is hard to find the beauty in a day, sometimes there is turbulence in the soul that distracts us from it. But it is there all the time.
 
This morning the sunrise made the clouds blush a wonderful pink…….God was telling me, look what I did for you! At every turn, He does something stunning in nature and it never stops. An ever changing piece of His artwork.
 
Life and noise try to compete for it, but we must not let it get the best of us.
 
That’s all I got today. Getting ready for another trip to California to visit the family.
 
Camera ready!
 
Peace and Blessings for a wonderful weekend opening your eyes to what God shows you……
 

pics taken with iphone on a walk in the desert this spring

The Accessible God

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9

Just imagine, this is what God says about us. So today, practice saying this to yourself:

“I am God’s special possession”

Now repeat……

and again.

There are a vast number of people on this planet that don’t have a clue that this is even possible. That the God of the Universe, who set the moon and the stars in the sky with a word, who keeps it all going….

keeps them going……wants so much for them to turn in His direction, just to open their heart to Him, so He can give them an inheritance that is beyond their wildest imagination. There are so many obstacles thrown in the path of people to prevent this.

Warped concepts of who God is and isn’t.

Horrible treatment by people that were supposed to love them, cherish them, make them feel safe. Things they see wrong with the Church.

Jesus came so that we could approach God without reservation. Without fear. He walked in our dust. He wasn’t afraid to come down to our dirty planet….To sweat, get tired, deal with the masses…..be God with us.

Jesus removed our roadblocks. He is the accessible God who draws us to the Father. Holds us all together with His Spirit. Let yourself believe that He wants you today.

And say it again with me:

“I am God’s special possession.” Feels good, doesn’t it?

Eden Restored

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it finds it’s rest in Thee.” St. Augustine
Everything the world is seeking so desperately can be found in the person of Jesus. Finding Him is like finding our forever home……
Drinking from the river of life is possible right here and now. I can stand on it’s shore, cup my hand under the crystalline waters and drink deep. Because of Him and what He made possible.
He is my quiet country lane I seek when I want peace…..my cool breeze in the sweltering heat of a desert summer. My bridge to Eden……My everything I have ever longed for, every desire of my deepest longing, even the ones I don’t know about, is satisfied in Him and through Him.
But without Him I am never satisfied.
I could ache like I do, for the pines or for the ocean swells and go to that quiet place, a closet even, and find that I have come out just as refreshed as if I had just spent time watching the waves upon the shore or hearing the wind making the pines sigh.
It is part of my oldest memory, this earth. Part of me and I cannot ever separate myself from it, nor do I want to, for He grew me out of it, this soil, this earth, and to it I will return one day.
Until such time as I reach that Eternal shore where will meet me……Restored.
 He will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.

 In that day they will say,
“Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”
Isaiah 25:8,9

Lead me to the cross

Savior I come
Quiet my soul remember
Redemption’s Hill
Where Your blood was spilled
For my ransom
Everything I once held dear
I count it all as loss
As I was walking and meditating on this song this morning, I thought, this is what it always comes down to at the beginning and end of every day……We come back when we lay down to sleep and we do quiet our souls. We lay down and then we lay it down too. Then, at the beginning of the day we look up, we return, we say…….”It all comes back to You Lord and what You did, every decision we make, we hold up to the cross, in the light of Your grace.”
We are humbled because we know that no matter what happens, that is where it all leads….and ends. Everything in this life will ultimately come down to One Thing. What we did with the cross,
what we did with Jesus. No other decision in this life matters really unless we settle that one first. 
Lead me to the cross
Where your love poured out
Bring me to my knees
Lord I lay me down
Rid me of myself
I belong to you
Oh Lead me, lead me to the cross 
Brooke Fraser, Hillsong United
Image from google 

The Beauty all around us

He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. 1 Thessalonians 5:10

Imagine, that we can know the originator of all beauty, truth and everything good. Imagine standing in His eternal presence. Imagine the best of everything we have experienced in this life…….. magnified way beyond anything we can dream. Sometimes it is enough to burn a hole clear through my brain, if I think of it too much!

I think of everything I have seen, what a gift memory is, a reliving of every most beautiful moment in my life. To think that of all these things I look back on, there is so much more to come.

Things like the hushed, hallowed quiet of standing in a snowfall, how it’s almost Holy.

Those times when you feel like all is right with the world for a brief moment…..when you have felt so happy you want to break into song, and you do.

All this beauty, and we have only experienced a very small fraction of it…….of what’s to come.

Every sigh of the wind through the trees….woven together as a chorus of praise to Him.

Look around next time you are surrounded by loved ones, and everyone is laughing. Who but God could invent something like laughter?

I remember a Christmas service that was just the right amount of joy and holy.

The world is magic, and if you don’t think it is, you haven’t opened your eyes yet. Just think of the way a small child’s eyes light up when they see bubbles. In their eyes you can see the light of Heaven if you look.

There is a spark there that the world has not yet put out.

So many moments of such grand and wondrous beauty, I think in those best of times….what else can possibly be better than this. And yet God says…..

Just wait…..

picture credit: public domain pictures, Anna Cervova

Upside down justice

“Can anyone teach God knowledge to God, Since He judges even the highest? One man dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and secure; his body is well-nourished, his bones rich with marrow. Another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, never having enjoyed anything good.” Job 21:22-25
Does it ever seem like we are living in an upside down world? Evil acts go unpunished. Something in us wants, craves justice. Sometimes we feel like taking matters into our own hands. There have been several movies that portray someone doing just that. The other night I happened upon one. I was over at someone’s house and a movie started. There was a heartfelt scene with a Dad and his daughter lovingly interacting. Then it all went terribly wrong. A home invasion. Three men burst in, killed the wife, kidnapped and later killed the daughter. The father barely survived. It was merciless, they killed without remorse. I left after the first scene.  
I later found out what happened. The “perps” got off, so the Dad ended up finding all three and ingeniously divising each one’s torturous death. He ended up terrorizing the whole town and in the end, he was blown up. Death by napalm. It wasn’t a satisfactory end for anyone. No one got justice, and nothing he did gave him any satisfaction in the end. He died clinging to a necklace his daughter made for him. It was hopeless.
We may say about someone, why is this person still taking up air? They do no good for anyone, they are miserable and life seems like a chore to them. There is no joy in their days, and they weigh others down with their bleak outlook. Why, we wonder, can’t they just die peacefully in their sleep? But thankfully, that is not up to me to decide. I am sure I would get it all wrong.

When my thoughts meander in that direction, the only way I know to get peace is to give God back His sovereignty. At times like that, it is tempting to wrestle it away from Him. But He alone has control of how many breaths, years, months, anyone has. We must give back to God’s what is God’s. When I let it rest with Him, He blesses me with the peace and strength I so desperately seek.

My thoughts calm.

I don’t have to worry about justice. I know that belongs to God. All that is wrong will one day be made right. And in the meantime, I will rest in Him. I remember how mercifully He has dealt with me.

The Word is a tremendous comfort in times like these. When I read these words in Job today, I was reassured. Others have felt the same way down through the ages. But God doesn’t change. And one thing is for sure. I can rest in His justice, and mercy. For really, what does any of us deserve?

It is because of His great love and mercy He has saved us from what we all deserve.

Because of His love for me, I get what I don’t deserve.

Morning Journal

When morning gilds the skies my heart awaking cries:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Alike at work and prayer, to Jesus I repair:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
When you begin the day, O never fail to say,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
And at your work rejoice, to sing with heart and voice,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
German hymn, author unknown
The birds were busy this morning,  as they crisscrossed staccato clouds. Roused from their nightime secrets places of slumber, they now have places to go, things to do.
Bunny is busy too, zig-zagging further down the street. It was a gilded sunrise, everything washed in peach……I had a great night’s sleep and I feel rested, first time in four days.
The moon still hangs lazily above the cloud bank to my right. I guess she is not ready to wake up on the other side of the world just yet.
What a luxury it is to sit here and watch the world wake up.
In my memory, I see myself, my Dad, a group of us standing in a circle holding hands on a green lawn, still damp with dew. We are singing the song, “Morning Has Broken.” Celebration in the air……
It is Easter sunrise.
Today I had another.
 

Just today…..

“In the days before his death,his Aunt Louisa asked him if he had made his peace with God.
His answer was “I did not know we had ever quarrelled, Aunt.” Attributed to Henry David Thoreau
The LORD your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.”
Thank you God for placing me here in this world you have created. I could have been born anywhere or not at all, and I thank you that I was. Each day holds a glimpse of Your Heaven. Help me not fail to notice the small moments of wonder happening all around me. Too many days have passed when I haven’t.
Consider just one bird….the cactus wren, so busy, so industrious is this couple that they build not one nest, but two….one as a backup, or maybe a decoy to fool predators?
And when I consider the full moon hanging there just so, its own presence daring us not to believe. I wonder how anyone can deny that kind of majesty and say that it was not created…..
that….. it….. just….. happened
We are all born with a spark of Grace…..made for eternity.
No matter how bad I think things are, there is always so much to thank you for. Sometimes it helps to do just that.
So today, I pause.