The Cat's Way

 

The sight of a soft cat on the floor, utterly relaxed, batting the ornament she took from my small tree caught my eye.  She is rolling about with it, immersed in the amusement. It has struck me that these are moments of the profound. 

Nearby an uptight human sitting at her computer, praying robust and hard prayers for sons, for country, for city, for leaders, for churches, for justice, her shoulders are tightly held, her mind is fixed and her heart is sober and hopeful until this glancing to the right and this funny beholding sets the mind suddenly free as the full-bodied, well-fed cat bats the small, red ornament under the couch.  She may do this for the entire day, I mused. She’s evidently done this all night as I found the small tree laying flat on its face and ornaments scattered across the room.  She’d jumped into my lap three times this morning hoping to sway me to her will: “Pat me. Pay attention to only me! Can’t you hear me purring?!”

What is the profound in this to me?  It is this, "Don't forget to be free, to be at ease, to linger in the peace that is yours to enjoy." Should only the cat enjoy the peace and ease afforded us? Let your prayers for justice, for freedom, for truth, for mercy rise high. Pray your prayers and then rest in a measure of the cat’s peace and you will have it all.  😉

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7

Little Worm

Who is this little worm, but a mite on my windshield?  Wiggling about, such a phenomenon. So small, not more than half a centimeter, but charged with the vigor of an athlete.  I thought his tummy must be full of food to have such energy-- and how did he light upon my windshield?  Had he been spinning a long strand of web too?

I had a trunk full of groceries.  I bought a little extra this time in case I can’t go back soon.  The little worm shrugged at me with a blushing of pink all about.  He has no care over powerful monopolies of food and such things. He needs no warehouse of goods to sustain him. He feeds in the open air as I plopped my bulk groceries down into a large cart. Alone in the warehouse full of people, no one bothered to look much at the other, all awkward behind masks.  He feeds outside of the system I’m in, I mused.   He does not envy me nor beg to come in.  What more could he need? Little worm, how I'd like to enter yours.

I, inside my car, trying to enjoy a moment beside a lovely lake, but concerned about the cottage cheese and meat in my cooler and concerned that I find a bathroom in due time. I’m caught up in a system chosen for me before I was.  Need it always be? 

Little worm, may I come into your way?  Leave the extra canned goods behind and wander in the ease of your dwellings?  The lake was mine for only a few moments, but it is yours your whole life through, though beautifully short and sweet.  We try much harder than you to extend ours.

"Get out of the car, get out of the race for the normal and safe", I say to myself. Let the world go on fading and the King take His place.  What am I saying?  Do I even yet know?   I’m only “considering the lilies” and a promise I hold.

Mathew 6: 25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes…….

 

 

Adams Rd.

I saw a parcel of land for sale for a solid sum. In the photo advertising, a large oak tree stood next to a shabby white house with ivy growing up the trunk.  I think I would give the whole sum for one oak tree if my bank account obliged.  Massive limb-arms made of strength and integrity and wood; great limbs stretch horizontal far.  And when any oak hangs its massive limbs low, like the giant arms of my father, for a daughter or a son of Adam to climb up, a transaction is made that can never be revoked. 

No one has ever forgotten climbing about on an oak limb, nor the feeling of bark against the skin; legs dangling over the earth, one would go even higher--knees pressed into the ridges struggling for ascent, blood rushing under the skin, and a breeze igniting a sense of losing the bonds of the earth. 

Adams Road, Ozark. 

 

The Cardinal

I heard a cardinal chirping in the morning and spotted him perched on the chain-linked fence separating the yard from the menacing-looking trailers next door. They, clearly ravaged by time and uncaring, stand in sick declaration of how lives gone off the rails might live.  I think they should be pulled away and burned, their land liberated from their oppression, but some are occupied and one in view through the privet sits empty.  The red-singing-glory sat on the fence, breaking my view of them and rousing a sense of awe in me.

Red-feathered-he had no prejudice of perch.  He lit on the fence much closer to the trailers than the cozy, sage house I was watching from.  

My God, your beauty is for us all.  It is found perching on the old and the new, the stigmatized and the glorified.  Beholding this scarlet-feathered-flame elevates us all. Your beauty and presence is for the reeking drug addicts, the demoralized among us who disgust with their behavior and waste, and it is for the sanitized, the rich, and the privileged.  It lights upon this green gable, the room in which I live, and offers the beauty of relationship, renewal,of communion and connection again and again in complete gentleness and humility.  You, God, have no prejudice while offering yourself to all.

Little Stars

He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn

and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea

and pours them out over the face of the land—the Lord is his name. 

Amos 5:8

When You speak, Lord, You light a runner’s torch within us.

We’re compelled to move carrying Your dancing flame. 

And after the light burns low, 

when the last ember’s glow has just disappeared

one turns to investigate all that You said, this speech that sprang from the breath of a star; our Morning Star.  

 I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. Revelations 22:16

Now we hold Your words under a light, still warm from the fire to study under a lamp Your guiding Words. 

Rendered speech too great for me, yet anchoring inside of me

and now the articulations of Orion drip from the tip of my own common pen. How can this be?

I’ve become bearer of light, too; His little star.  The Morning Star took His rightful place within us, now He shines.

                               

Oh God, You are the surge that chases through the cord and brings us into light. We are Your prophesied walking stars, tipping to spill into the night.

Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky. Philippians 2:15

And I am all human and, as this, I can only try.

We shine within an honor that no one can fully describe, this privilege of living as God’s image bearers; His Tribe.

We, luminous lanterns hung up through Christ against the dark, one by one by one through the ages hung by the Father of lights. 

Arise, you who sleep,

Arise from the dead,

And Christ will give you light.

Ephesians 5:14

The morning He set the cornerstone of the earth’s foundation-- when foundations were laid, angels and stars sang songs of awe and wonder.
 In our day, we pick up their chorus.  Job 38:7

Beloved, give your praise a song,  you walking stars, beloved lights on earth.  Orion’s belt--- truth pulled tight around your waists. 

He looks to earth and sees the darkness lit up, His racing heart proclaims, “My beloved! 

 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. Daniel 12:3

April 6, 2019

There's beauty in the mists of life when definition wanes.

And captivating pontificating about what may lie ahead

The river's winding curves can hide what's just around the bend

And in the trees and forest floors are creatures blending in

--------------------------

A sudden morning fog sets in and clarity is veiled

All the vision that I'd had suddenly has failed

In the haze I hold on to what I know is true

and take the path I see by faith-- it will lead me through

------------------------------------

Then in the potter's kiln I find all has filled with smoke

The heat and flame, sure to fuse the crumbled and the broke

 The cloud has hid the sacred work but soon it will emerge

A brilliant piece of priceless art, the Potter’s secret work

-------------

1 Cor. 13:12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

Coming and Going

My eyesight is both going and coming.  When I look at this white screen with only bare eyes, the images and letters are not clear to me; my sight is going.  But as I sit typing, looking through my purchased lenses, I see as the letters and images actually  are....quite clear.

I am getting older.  My vision is losing clarity.

When I was young and my eyes could see clearly, my spiritual eyes were impaired. I would wonder in my relation to God, I often could not see myself in relation to Him and I had many fears and many things along life's path seemed a blur. But as my physical eyes are waning, my spiritual eyes are sharpening. I have new lenses that sharpen my view. I see through lenses of faith and spirit and there is much more to see than I once thought! This is the grace of God at work in a growing habitual surrender to His love, His Word, and His path.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.  Ephesians 1:18.

Faith sees what mortal eyes can't see.   I no longer fear what my natural eyes can or cannot see, for faith sees what I need to see! 

Beyond the vision of two brown eyes is a glimpse of a Kingdom without end!  I see Him, my God, holding my hands, putting light on a path that I daily walk in.  I see, I see!   I see Him sitting on His throne in Heaven,  I see my spot in that place.  No longer feeling alone in troubled times, no longer feeling responsible for it all.  Faith sees all the things Jesus promised, provided, and planned.

Thank you, Father, for Jesus...

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free

Luke 4:18

Thank you for sight, for reversing the effects of spiritual blindness.

May your eyes be blessed today to see all He desires for you to see and give you peace.

Intentions: Asking For a Friend

When spring awakens and rubs her sleepy eyes, lifting a fresh gaze across the barren landscape has she come to bring bouquets or storms?  And when summer burns away her sweet morning dew and dries the rolling white streams, has it come to scorch the earth or ripen garden vegetables and fruit? And when the leaves turn golden within autumn’s warm crescendo, has death been ushered in upon the land or has it brought the season of harvest, pumpkins, football and friends?  And when winter blasts the earth with an exacting icy grip, is all lost or has it come to purify with its milky blankets of snow, to bring rest for one and all?

When He made the earth full of seed and people to walk bare and free upon it, was His plan all along to banish us and set us under a curse, or was his intention fruitful work, creativity, fellowship, and happiness forever? When He gave us the great law on the mountain in tablets of stone, did He wait to see us fail or give us hope to one day live a splendid way? 

Has He intended to fully keep us, provide for us, give us hope, gather us under His wing, free us from all that entangles us and keeps us from the pure expression of who we are here to be? Or has He left us to be afraid, confused, abandoned from time to time, expecting us to figure it all out in a worldly wilderness alone without a daily guide? Will He let sickness overcome us alone and the fear that surrounds it to steal the upward curving of smiling lips, the creativity from our minds, the deep love in our hearts for one another?  

I believe that spring awakens to scatter a field with blooms of vetch and mountain buttercup.  I believe she blows winds of change to give us more.  I believe spring comes with her pockets full of hyacinth and daffodil, that summer comes with long days and warm nights to give us time to sit under the stars and chase lightning bugs.  I am sure that autumn clothes us with comfort and winter with repose and I believe that all God's intentions are good, noble, and right--that He is perfectly kind. 

So when one asks Him why, there need be no fear in the answer.  He has the best of intentions.

.

Mists and Miracles 2013

The mist was rising mystical and beautiful over Gar Creek early as I drove past.  It captures our gazes from behind the rolled up windows every time.  And now the steam rising from the silver pot of Italian vegetable soup on the stove;  always, always I pause and think of it and how to explain it to the kids....those vapors rising.

And I smile wide this morning.  I smile and I sob too because I remember His word saying this in the book of James:


You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes................


And my very small mind reaches for this...........reaches hard to comprehend a few things like: 


You clothed me with skin and flesh, and you knit my bones and sinews together--Job 10:11)
..........within a vapor


For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future--Jeremiah 29:11.
..........within a vapor


For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end. Psalms 48:14
..........within a vapor


Somewhere within the wisps you and I have come.  In the mist I have run in fields and scaled those giant round bales of hay.  I have had puppies and written papers, had break ups and enjoyed brownies.  I have felt conviction of my sins then later was "joy drowned" when they were washed away from me.   I have felt compassion and hatred, have seen my babies born on hospital beds and became their admirer and servant forever. In the vapors I have learned bird songs and bought groceries, have prayed for a friend and asked for advice.  I have tried really hard and later, understood grace.  It suddenly seems so amazing that all of this He calls a vapor?


And I breath out the miracle of my breath and His plans for me and us, and consider that if all of this is just a vapor to Him, then what more does He have in store?


And then He reminds me,


 "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him."  1 Cor. 2:9