It has been so long since I've attempted to put into words (at least here in this space) something of the journey into all the truth that there is...I have been reading Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts and her blog "A Holy Experience"...as well as trying to capture one thing a day that I am thankful for on my digital device with her handy App...the pace of life is slow here in this month of my life...time to reflect and enter into the moments He offers me each day...walking beside my daughter as she takes steps to leave our home...searching for points of contact with my remaining son...today is my mother's birthday and I want to call and spend a few moments focusing on her and her story...stopping like this each summer has become a familiar rhythm for me...always hectic and flustered during the school year...disappointment with how I handle people in the midst of life's demands...this break in the pattern allows me space to explore...and I am grateful for it.

Wondering about Butterflies Today...?

I was noticing butterflies yesterday... it seems to me that God made flowers to bloom with grace and beauty where they are planted. They are rooted in the earth and have a specific locality in which they are to exist and be what He created them to be. Birds have flight and soar above us on the winds. They cause us to lift our eyes from the earth and our spirits to lift... so what about butterflies? They are flowers in flight... they don't soar but whirl and spin and dip and dive.... they alight on plants that aren't food... do they explore the veins of the oak leaf and trace its varied pathways? What are their thoughts as they wander the space between earth and sky? They seem to be content to be moving about dancing together in such inefficient patterns of flight... Butterflies make me stop and wonder about how I am made and what might there be to enjoy in my time between the earth and the sky....

Of Wounds, Cleansing and Relief

Today a dear friend's daughter went down the hill behind our house on her bike and ended up scraping her knee and elbow raw on the concrete sidewalk. Her mother carried her up to my home in her arms reassuring her through her cries and tears that she would be all right. I noted later how my help wasn't really help at all. I got ice and some bandaids but all I could think to offer was pain relief. I offered to run to the pharmacy to pick up some Bactene spray to ease her suffering and wondered if we had any liquid tylenol that wouldn't be past its expiration date. Her mother asked if she could put her in the tub. Her wounds needed bathed. I realized later that what she really needed was just what her mother was offering... not relief from pain but more pain at least for a little bit in order to cleanse her wounds so that they would have an opportunity to heal properly... nothing I was offering was going to provide her with what she needed most. I wondered at this later... why my thoughts and concerns were all about easing her pain. I am grateful her mother was focused on her care, her true need and not to relieve her pain... at least not until the necessary work was done... what a picture to me of God's love. How often I want the immediate relief of suffering and have no thought for the work that the pain must do to prepare me for what I most need....

Remembering the Purple Iris

Yesterday as I walked toward work under a dark sky, I looked ahead at the way I needed to go... I saw a staircase and sighed with weariness as I contemplated what I needed to walk towards and through in my day. The lowering clouds seemed to underline the weight I carried... I happened to be walking with a friend, a very dear friend, who noticed some deep purple irises planted by the way we were walking... she said, "Oh, I need to smell those!" her exuberance drew me along in its wake... I too smelled the iris and said "It smells like purple" because I had heard her say this of the smell of iris before. She smile and noted the ruffly edge of each petal and murmured "God is SO extravagant!" I smiled and as we parted I carried the memory of that iris with me... still had to walk up those stairs into the darkness of my day, nothing of the circumstances of what I had to carry would change... but I did carry the smell of purple with me as I walked....

God Alone Knows....

Well, I'm reading through Job now and it seems to me that there are 4 guys talking a lot about things they know nothing about... they appear to be trying to understand God and explain how we "ought" to live to make things "work"... it's pretty clear that they don't know what they are talking about... no clue as to what is really going on... I wonder what God wanted us to know about Him when He gave us this piece of writing... it seems clear to me that suffering is inexplicable in Job's story and somehow God shows us a man who continues to trust Him despite his personal suffering... and how that suffering is increased by his friends... wow... how do I do that? Where am I clueless as I talk to those in pain? What would be a better way to respond to their hurt?

Something like "I don't know why this is happening to you. I am so sorry." Perhaps that is it? I believe that God is good despite the circumstances, but is that helpful to hear when you are hurting?

Please lead me with Your Spirit and I walk through this day and come in contact with hurting people....

Whole Hearted

^{2 Chronicles 12:12} Because Rehoboam humbled himself, the LORD’s anger turned from him, and he was not totally destroyed. Indeed, there was some good in Judah... ¹⁴ He did evil because he had not set his heart on seeking the LORD.

I want to be about more than "some good"... what would it look like to "set my heart on seeking the LORD"?

Sunday morning we sang these words:

"He became sin

Who knew no sin

That we might become His Righteousness"

Words from the song "Jesus Messiah" by Chris Tomlin based, I suppose, on the passage in 2 Cor. 5:21:"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

I wonder how I might be the righteousness of God today?

A little before this in the same passage it says:

"For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." (emphasis mine)

What does it mean that "all died"... something to consider that those who have died are no longer under the law.... how might I live today freed from the law of sin and death?

Romans 7:1 "...the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives... 4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. ⁶But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code." (emphasis mine)

Also this morning, another line from a Chris Tomlin song, "Here I am to Worship":

"I'll never know how much it cost to see my sins upon that cross--" (emphasis mine)

I frequently substitute the word "sin" with the word "Friend"... as if the two words are engraved on the opposing sides of a flat oval disk which spins and flips over and over until they are a blur... no longer one or the other but one and the same thing, a new thing, a three dimensional shape that exists in and of itself... a mystery.

... we who serve God by the Spirit.... Phil. 3:3

Is that me... really?

Phil 3:8-11

"8 I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,...that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead." (emphasis mine)

What does it mean that I "belong to another" and "serve in the new way of the Spirit" as I walk into my world today?