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.

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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