The Long Conversation

Every blog has a song inside it. Today a love song because our Father so deeply loves us. Click and loop to hear it while you read. 🙂 <

I have pulled up a chair, poured a hot cup, I've had a cleaning cry when I needed to, I've poured it all out and I've kept it all in and found that it's ok either way. I've stayed as long as I've liked, and I've come back when I may because there is time--my lifetime going on forever. The conversation that will never end has been a midnight discourse, a pondering parley, it's been a desperate question with a year's long answer, an immovable opinion remedied with His single word. You're invited into the dialogue, but I've found it is prudent to listen awhile too--listen a lifetime.

I've peered into the Great Story to see some of the first starters like, "Let there be light!" and "Be fruitful and multiply". I've heard the first words of young Jesus saying, "Didn't you know I would be about my Father's business?" Year after year, page after page, His Word permeates the reader, overflowing one's life, bringing eyes and ears alive to Him. It leaps off the page to meet me here in room, in my car, in my world. The conversation has begun, and it will never end, but one must take one's place and join in.

All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved...Romans 10:13

I've tossed silly, stormy questions that He hung straight up to dry. I've volleyed words only to run from His replies, blocking them out, pretending I didn't hear. I've marched into His office, and I've cowered behind the curtain unsure if I had His audience, if I had been heard. I've written Him books and books full of feelings, told Him my dreams and listened to His for me. I've heard that He traces the lines of every word, following along and I've known Him to break right in. He's rang bells to seize a moment with me, He's sent a song to share in my thoughts as I pray. And it's a conversation with no end. You can join in too. Most of you already have.

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.....Isaiah 1:18

It started for me with a kneeling-prayer on my dad and mom's dining room floor, an admission, a repentance, a glancing back at a self-driven life to say goodbye and start anew, start the conversation that has gone on until now and will go on forever.

Sometimes I step back from the dialogue in ugly unbelief while He moves near. I may falter in my speech while He's finessed a forest for me to find a word in, to feed my ears and eyes His feelings for me and the way forward. I may stutter. I will stammer only to feel the wind and find the sky has coalesced into meaning and direction. I find He has carved a cloud into holy speech, a picture of His written Word. And this conversation will go on and on. If you don't yet know, He wants to talk to you too...but I bet you know.

There have been love notes galore that remind me, "For God so loved the world", and books sent to shake me out of my stupors and into discipline and correction. His words have come by way of men and women speaking His heart's utterance for me.

Do not neglect the spiritual gift that is in you, which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the elders laid their hands on you. 1Timothy 4:14)

I've heard it through signs on the highway, signs in the sky, from stones on the ground, from the mouths of children, the eyes of animals and in any way He chooses to reveal His mind and echo His timeless nature and Word. I posture myself to hear with belief. I exhort myself to listen and join the conversation with all of my heart as His whole world opens to form His-voice-to-see as it did in the beginning.

For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:19-20

The long conversation starts here: