39

April 7, and the temperature is 39F.  61F in the house.  I wanted to stay in the comforter all day.

I think I will.  I will stay in The Comforter.

One real comfort.  One real source of comfort.  One place to find satisfaction...and He DOES NOT MIND.

You don't tug on Superman's cape, but Our Father does not mind at all.  In fact he encourages it.  One of his favorite stories is about a woman who tugged on his cape and was instantly healed from a chronic debilitating disease.  

He had the psalmist write that there is one human desire that has a place above all others.  The ONE THING of Psalm 24:7.  One thing have I desired...You.  To stare in awe.  To weep at your beauty.  To be speechless in the face of your grace.  Dumbfounded...at the most fundamental level, unable and unwilling to say a thing because all expression is expressed in You.

I will stay in You today, Father.  Comfort and heal me.  Be glorified in us today.  Manifest your Kingdom in and through your bride today.  Rest your presence in great weight on the places where we call upon your Name today.  Shekinah Chabod.

Trust

Inadequate gratitude.  Yup.  Gotta be.

I find myself not trusting the goodness I see in my circumstances at the moment.  It is easy to manufacture a story that contradicts what I see.

My mind is too available to lies.  I am not busy enough recognizing grace and mercy, and expressing gratitude.  Ingrate!

I am not an ingrate.  I just do not have gratitude habits.  No.  I do not have adequate gratitude habits.

Enough analysis.

Daddy, thank you for loving me with the Blood of Jesus.  Thank you, Father for redeeming me from the mire.  Thank you finding me when I was not even looking for you.  Thank you for holding me while I struggle to prove you are faithless.  Thank  you for refusing to let me go back to my idols.

Thank you for flooding my life with things to be grateful for, so I can develop better and better habits of gratitude.

Thanks, Daddy.

Grateful, not Dead

Accord v White Tail doe.  No real contest.  Accord needs fixing.  White Tail beyond fixing.

Occurs to me that there is no time to react.

When the event is going to happen, it is too late to act to prevent.  The prevention, if it is going to happen, has to happen in advance.  Loss mitigation was in place.  Incident prevention was not.

It has been a while since I was in an accident.  I am going to learn from this one and use it.

But mostly, I am going to thank my Father in Heaven for his love.

Astounding

Nobody said it would be like this.  Maybe those who know are going on being astounded by even more astounding love, so they are too busy to say.  Actually, Steve Avant acted like this was his experience of grace, but I did not want to believe him.

Look.  I get a call that historically sent me.  Now, no send.  Just good questions to ask and good actions to take.  Then a soul at rest.  Then knowing...knowing what to do next and when, and all a soul at rest.  Then having acted, among other souls, still a soul at rest and still knowing what to do when, at rest.  Favor and grace at every turn.  Clarity of mind, absence of fear.

This is Kingdom living.  Thank you, Father.  Please keep me astounded.  Please continue to give me opportunities to receive love and give it away.

Time for More Mac and Cheese

Last time I was writing about the different ways people eat m&c, and how they sometimes insist that their approach is righter than that of others.

I have been thinking a lot since then about the mac and cheese itself. About what we who have eaten the mac and cheese (some say we have drunk the KoolAid) have in common. What is this thing we have?

macaroni
A type of pasta in the form of short tubes.
(used by Italian-Americans, especially in Philadelphia and New Jersey) A generic term for pasta.

cheese
A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk.
Any particular variety of cheese.
A piece of cheese, especially one moulded into a large round shape during manufacture.

macaroni and cheese
A savory dish made from cooked macaroni and cheese sauce.


I don't know. Let's go exploring.

I am not sure that M&C is a good metaphor for the Gospel. The thing I am sure of is that the way people have favorite ways to eat it is a good metaphor for the ways Christians express and engage in Christianity.

This I know. It is accepting God's Grace that we have in common. I get in trouble there, but that is okay. The next thing that happens is that someone asks if I mean that those who have not accepted the grace of God are not Christians. I would pretty much say yes to that.

So the Macaroni and Cheese is saying yes to the Christian God and accepting as true the message of the Christian Bible. Maybe that is why mac n cheese is a good metaphor. It is a combined, yet two part thing. Like Christianity is two part. It is hearing the deal and saying yes to it. It is receiving new life and giving worship.

It is a relationship. Macaroni by itself is interesting. Cheese sauce by itself is interesting. But the combination is so much more than the sum of its parts. And so is Christian life.

I think this is going somewhere. I am encouraged, Father. Please continue to develop this in my heart. More to come.

Another Friday Night

There is something about the transition into the weekend. Last week it was running up to get the boy. This week sitting over supper with the men of two Baptist congregations. I prefer a transitional event to just going to the house.

Work is such a big thing right now. Every week seems so full, yet there is room to stop and move into a couple of days of rest. Well, at least relative rest. I just spent the last hour on the phone and computer. But they are put away now.

And the weekend is underway. No big plans. Really the best part of these weekends without the lad are the routines of maintaining the livability of the house. Trash run, vacuuming, laundry. There is a rhythm there that is satisfying and much better than sitting. Sitting does have it's place. So does at least a bit of yard work, especially since cooler weather is here. Another transition.

There has been such grace for the trials and challenges of the work week, Father. There has also been genuine emotion, as well, with properly placed expression. At least I think so. Father, I am so certain there is room there, in expression, in safe expression, for further restoration of my soul. There is still so much that gets in the way of full freedom to pour out the love you keep me full of. When I will let you. Thank you. You are the definition of faithful.

My boy is asleep over there. I am so glad there is a God who loves us both. I feel so inadequate. I have always felt so, in the face of my needing to be a parent.

At the same time, I also feel so grateful. I have come to know that I am supposed to feel inadequate, in this regard and all others. I can not do it, if it is worth doing. It is just that simple. I need help with anything worth doing. Any help that is available that is not directly from God is at least obliquely from God. All of the help worth getting is from God, for all of the things worth doing.

The only time parenting, living, serving, loving, edifying, analyzing gets hard, impossible, is when I try to do it alone.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Whatever part I have in it...if my boy is to bring glory and honor to the great king, I am helpless to do my part alone.

Father, thank you for the help so far. Please, do not remove your hand from me. Your hand will not leave unaddressed the wickedness of my life, and will also never leave me without cover. Thank you. I can rest forever in that one lone truth.

Listening

It is turning into a season of listening. There is grace for it. Starting tomorrow I have to stop heading off to the next destination, realizing that when I am listening, I am on station until the listening is over. I am not going to judge the speaker, the content or the listener, the venue or the crowd. Just the waves of grace. Is this too selfish...to be about the listening, but to be about the grace to listen?

Father, I see a bit of what is up. I really want to listen, but more I want your supernatural ability to love with my ears. I want the ease of coming to rest in the assignment, free from the need to contribute, judge or coach. Free to feel you very near as you help me listen.

What I am afraid of

Sometimes it takes me time to figure out what is going on. I have to look at what I am being tempted with to figure out what I am holding back from my Father. It is so easy to stay in the habits of pride. All I need is to turn to my Father with what concerns me, and he will perfect it. I can not do what will matter in the issues that I am assaulted with. I get a chance to be reminded of how small I am, and how great my Father is.

There really is a special spiritual thing about fathers and sons. And the key stories involve fathers trusting God with their sons. Father, I am tempted to worry about my son. So all the more, I surrender my Isaac to you. I trust your plan because I want to trust my plan. I need to trust you more than I need to trust my plan. All of my plans without you seemed so well reasoned until they broke under my weight and cut me. Who can compare leaning on the arm of God with leaning on the marsh reeds of Egypt. Have mercy on my son and his mother. Grant us the grace needed to bring to you the Glory that is yours. Restore my soul. I need you, Daddy.

Good Grace

Some days are easier than others. Difference now is that the days are not easier because the circumstances are easier, but rather because I remember to stay in the embrace of grace, and let myself be carried through upon the everlasting arms of love. It is getting easier to love, as the habits of expecting to love, regardless of the response, are daily formed and reinforced. I expect days when, on my own, it would be much harder to love. But the supply of love is so infinitely large.

I am reminded of how much I could have used this in the past. But a big part of expecting to love now exists in me because I did not have it then. God, it was such a barren existence. The dryness of it made me thirsty for real living water.

The pleasure of the writing, now, is that the memory of my dry hard ground still hurts. And so it tells me that my soul is still in need of healing. Help me, Papa to forgive and heal. Help me to release the hurts. Make me more and more like Christ.

Wow!

I heard a testimony today. I think I have been making room for the testimony, while Dad has been doing the work. The testifier really needed to hear the testimony. It made the miracle even more real. It was wonderful to have nothing to do but celebrate.

The goodness of God, alive in the real practical life of a human. Who decides to trust an unseen God.

So, Father, thank you. Thank you for a testimony of your great grace. I love your grace. I love to see your grace knocking down prison walls. My walls knocked down is very very good. Getting to witness the rubble and dust of someone else's...wow. Thank you.

The One Constant is Change

Wrong. The one constant is Christ. The only needed constant is Christ. Every other thing is on its way elsewhere. Back to the ashes and dust from which it was made. There is one thing that can be leaned on without fail: Christ. There is one unshifting anchor for the body, soul and spirit: Christ. There is one arm of one Beloved upon which the church can and must lean: The arm of Christ.

Thanks for the fruit tonight, Daddy. I got the chance to see and know. Thank you. Have mercy on us when we go to Egypt. Thank you that you made your church for us all to be a part of. Help us each day to find our part in the body of Christ.

Songs in my head.

I have never talked about songs stuck in your head that somebody has not understood and agreed. It does not happen with speeches, poems, movie lines. It happens with songs. I have Seals & Crofts "Hummingbird" in my head right now. And I am enjoying it as much as the first time I ever heard it. And I am seeing images from 1975.

Songs must be so powerful.

Dad made songs and put them in our heads. He made us compatible with them and made us to make songs.

Dean Robert Evans talked about all of the years he had spent around the college age group and how the one thing they had always had was being surrounded constantly with music. Craig and I said, "Well, of course." The Dean said, "No, not of course. It goes away." How sad that was at the time. To think that days would come when we would turn off the music.

And it is not instrumentals. It is songs. Lieder. Mit WORDS. The music expresses, but not like words. It is the words and music together in our heads that sticks. It is a wonder and a delight to me. I want to know more about how and why that works. I wonder if it is my spirit singing, and my soul hears it and repeats it into my consciousness. But what does that mean then, when the song is "not entirely edifying?" Does my spirit sing bar room ditties to the Holy Spirit? I want to conclude that having any song in my heart is better than being dry, dead and songless. I have been there. I am not there now, by the very grace of God.

Father, thank You that you sing over us. Songs are vital to you, and so they are life to us. This is very good.

Delight yourself also in the LORD: and he shall give you the desires of your heart.

Delight yourself also in the LORD: and he shall give you the desires of your heart.

For a long time I have thought about the two ways of reading that last clause. In the Word of Faith church, where I heard it first, it was about getting stuff. At least to a certain extent. Depended on who you were listening to. Made sense in that context, too. God loves me and gives me the things that I desire.

The other thought has been that, while I am in the process of delighting myself in the Lord, He will be in the process of giving me desires.

So lately, as the essential core of this walk in the Holy Wild, leaning on Christ, delighting myself with being with Him, practicing faith by clinging to my King, goes on, He has been teaching me to desire new things.

I know that I am a social guy, but for several months, Father has been showing me that He wants me to sit in public and drink coffee. There is no reason to expect that it is not about prayer, that I am not there to pray. I also suspect that it affords the opportunity, as well, to relate and to pour out Gods Love.

Did it today. There was a brand new kind of YES as a consequence, a fresh vision, like I got new eyes, and maybe new ears. Very Good.

Father, thank You for being available to delight myself in. Thank You for the rent curtain.

Happy New Year

Read something in the last day or so. Something about Ms. Winfrey and a new year meaning that we had another chance to get it right. If there was ever a failed humanist approach to life, that is it. The idea that man has what it takes, if he only gets enough opportunities to prove it to himself and the world. The idea that one day we will witness the life of a man who gets it right.

This is very attractive. We all also know that it would make him a god. We spend a lot of social energy looking for the human who will transcend his humanity and behave like a god worth proving that men have divinity in them. Society tracks the beautiful, because we know that beauty is a trait of the gods. We track the extraordinarily intelligent, the extraordinarily physically gifted, the ones born into generations of wealth and power.

They all fall. They all fail. They all fail to be worthy of worship. But so much hope was invested in them, that when the investment tanks, they become the objects of revulsion, derision. Ms. Winfrey has had to find a way to stay slim, because she becomes the failed god of her worshipers when she puts on weight.

Godhood for mortal men is very hard, and then you die.

But no matter how awful it is to be a human god, it is harder to abandon the illusion that it is possible. That is what it takes to be free, however. Just say, "I am not worthy of any measure of worship. The One who established the need to find One who is worthy of worship already revealed Himself to the whole world. I will only worship the One Who Is Worthy."

I worship You, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You alone are worthy of all praise, honor, wisdom, authority, love, and grace. May the Name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob receive all the Glory.

Boy Full of Faith

My boy is uncomfortable in his momentary circumstances. At the same time, he knows he is going to be fine. He is okay. He has and is exercising faith. He will come out well on the other side of it.

Social discomfort is familiar to me. At the same time I realize how very much the Holy Spirit has balmed my wee soul. I know that there is a balm for the heart of the believer, and that there is more there than comfort. The healing is remarkable. Both worth talking about and worth giving thanks for.

There are still situations where I am lacking in grace. But...there is no lack of grace, and I am learning to access it.

How glorious is the mercy of our Father. To ponder my life of acts, and know that He will not turn from me. I look like His Son, sound like Him, smell like Him, when He puts His hands on me and pulls me close. The skin of a sacrifice has been placed on my neck and arms, so I feel like His Son. The clothing of His Son has been placed upon me, so that I smell right, just like the Son of His favor.

Father made it work out this way. He knows my frame, but he is distracted from His wrath by the Holy Perfection of His Son, in Whom He has hidden me.

Thank You, Father, for making a way for us to draw near and receive Your blessing.

Bad Feelings

A life of grace is very good. A life in the Holy Wild is good. It is a life where knowing reigns supreme. Where knowing that everything worth wondering about is settled. So when a question arises, the answer is "Finished." The answer is "Yes and Amen." Then what is left is feelings, too. These feelings in a restored soul are love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, longsuffering (why do I always forget that last one?)

From the vantage point of my Father's lap, it is clear that there is healing available for the soul who pursues it. There is indeed a balm in Gilead. Maybe only after an aching soul gets a chance to see the damage being done by leading others to ache as well, will they seek the balm for someone else, and come in contact with it themselves. One touch of Grace is all it takes.

Father, heat the balm to cause the aroma of "finished" to linger. Contrast it with false satisfaction. Use your church to walk daily in the contrast. I was broken, but now I am whole. I ached, but now I am at rest.

Kio Stark

Don't have clue how I found and started reading Kio. Two blogs and a website. But I know why. She talks to strangers. and better, she listens to them. Then later she writes about it.

Kio talks to strangers, and strange people. She talks to scared people and she talks to scary people. My best take is that she values what they bring. They are never fodder for a writer.

Evidently she teaches college kids to do the same. And so this thing is perpetuated. Something happens when there is a connection. Without the daring to connect, there is no hope of the power of connecting.

The daring is love. The listening without interrupting is love. The permission to get past "news, sports, weather" is love.

Yup. I wrote about this last night. And now I understand my love for Kio. She is a lover. And the King of Love keeps her supplied with the desire and ability to pull back the curtain and help us see people.

Having read her and browsed her "life-on-display" I am pretty sure she does not go through the curtain that was rent from the top down, and sit on Daddy's lap. I am pretty sure she does not do this daring under the Blood. Yet she is clearly supplied. The life produced is clearly extra-ordinary.

Daddy, please help me to find more lovers and to understand more of how you touch the world through them. Please continue to bless Kio.

Hurts

Aching is part of the Wilderness experience. It is possible to be totally at rest leaning completely on Christ, and ache at the same time. But then I know that the ache is not from any lack I have. It is from seeing some else's hurting.

The rod of Aaron was a long-dead piece of almond wood. There were two things that transformed it into the permanent symbol of God's choice of the Levites and Aaron as their leader. First was the truth that God made a way for the Levites to draw near him and intercede. The second is that, just like the Levites themselves, the rod was very near to God, and transformed by His presence. The result was a rod in the ark to remind Israel of these things. Yet even with this, even chosen Israel chose to avoid drawing near. Chosen Israel chose to avoid the intimacy that will not tolerate sin. It is the same opportunity as always: Choose to be close to God, burned clean and transformed for His Glory, or choose familiarity, distance, and self shaping, self regard.

Come into the light. Chase away the darkness. Be transformed into a new thing, a living thing made alive from a dead thing. A thing transformed for a holy and glorious purpose, far bigger than you can imagine or manage. God, help us to be dissatisfied with religion and a dead life.

I went adventuring with my King this weekend. I had two distinct opportunities to stay at home "on the porch" or go adventuring. In both instances, my soul said I should stay home, and my Lord said I should go out walking with Him.

Adventuring was better. And He kept me. So I am okay, and I am stretched by daring to trust Him. He said that He would never leave me nor forsake me.

Decisions of the magnitude made this weekend will never appear so big again. Now what will appear big, and will require leaning on the arm of my Beloved, will be the next arena for growth, and the next, and the next. Each marking parts of my life that I want to retain control of.

Father, I know there is a day coming when all of me is resting on and trusting all of You. I thank You for the promise of that day. In the meantime, thank you for each moments mercy, grace, favor, wisdom, patience, love, courage, and hope.