Love will grow over barriers and around obstacles still blooming and still fragrant. Love is having the strength to stay. Love is a wild and furious risk, a pouring out of all that one can from that cup and drink it. Love is rich and poor. Love is sickness and health. Love is a verb, an action word. Nothing about love is passive. Love cannot be manipulated. Love. Risks. Everything. The Holy God is Love’s name…ponder this, ponder Him on this busy Tuesday of your life. Love changes everything!
Pages of snap shots in my dreams.
I rise early in the morning a few seconds post dawn. The melted butterscotch sky is streaked with baby blue and left over indigo. A nice squall blew up last night and the sand has no footprints in it. The sand dunes are pregnant with sea oats. The oats, my favorite tropical grass, sway charmingly in the breeze and quietly support the island with their roots. The large oats smell like salt and theirs stalks tall and sleek weave into grass.
Just in a snap spot of my dreams I take off running from shore as the rain begins. I dash and grab my laundry on the clothes line.. At that moment your camera just happened to find my face and you say,” your eyes are blue- gray, like seawater.” I close my eyes. When I open them you are gone.
Shutter stop.
The knockout punch…
I have eaten nothing in three days.
The pain in my chest is a slow agony.
I have no memory of warmth with others of my kind.
Although fading, my longing drives my soul forward.
A primal memory of Joy beats like a captured bird in my brain.
Yet somehow I know Him and see the full Glory of God.
So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me. Genesis 16:13
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These high school halls are not hallowed halls but they are unsurpassed in the scheme of life lessons….Truth and Fiction …
Remember that boy with the unfortunate eyebrows hurrying down the hall as if afraid or embarrassed? He was.
Remember that girl passing a note to her “steady” guy declaring her undying devotion because he said he “loved” her? He did not.
Remember when you thought a certain friend’s family seemed so perfect? They were not.
The stereo- types still linger in these tales of fiction. Fifty years later and I can name them all by heart.
We all wanted to be (well most of us) to be prettier, cuter, thinner, funnier, taller, shorter, darker, lighter, a better singer, a better dancer, the beauty queen, the sports star, the math genius, or the valedictorian.
I guess it is like the “Breakfast Club” and the “Big Chill” movie all rolled up together. (we did have the best music though). I always felt like the adults in my days of high school tried to minimize the harshness of the unspoken boundaries. There are many people that I admired from afar and would have like to have known better but there was also a nagging burden of exposure.
Ends up that about ninety-nine percent of High School Fiction left some of us hurt and even wounded and that is where reality steps in. No, we had not yet let our tender souls relax in the discovery zone of finding there is no such thing as perfect. How could we know that what lay ahead would require a lot more truth and a little less comparison?
Just saying…
atmosphere of ice and refuse.
this pressures me to think of us.
we said we were “all in.”
we talk about the black or white of Life
the Sunsets on Mars are Blue.
When hardship comes your way, will you tell yourself it’s a tool of God’s grace and a sign of his love, or will you give in to doubting his goodness? Paul Tripp
When the road seems shorter than before.
Wherever you turn there is no open door.
Your life is in convulsions like vomit on the floor.
All the paperwork of your life is yellowed and rotted.
Is the God’s grace of love or is it cruel?
Who do you worship and let rule you?
Will you head for the hills of Babylon?
Look for ways to numb your sorrow?
Will you turn to the One who made you?
Will you cry out and hang on to your pew?
Will you doubt God’s goodness in the dross?
Will you walk away or toward the cross?
High desert winter.
White-out blizzard coming soon.
Laura Nyro on my stereo.
She warns me of the heartache coming on.
Wood burning stove keeps me warm.
Laura’s voice does the rest.
We got the blues and got it bad.
Wrapped in my Navaho blanket
Still shivering to my soul.
She walks like a warrior, straight-backed and crown high. Yet, humble.
Her avian eyes propel with the speed of light. Yet, no guile is found in her.
Her strong and steady hands caress a heated brow or wield a sword.
She walks like a warrior. Her sword discreetly at her side.
She is wise and does not invite chaos into her life.
She equips herself with helmet and shield, both righteous and redemptive.
She walks like a warrior. She is keenly aware of the night.
She nimbly opens the lantern that guides her path.
She walks with a quiet understanding of how this goes. Yet, she delights in Hope.
And every day she wakes and walks like a warrior.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness…
Ephesians 6:10-12
I have long been running toward that Morning light
trying so hard to be the holy one with all my might
Then you whisper in my ear, “Peace, be still.”
I have long been kneeling in that Cathedral in the sand
trying so hard to form my self into a holy jar
Then you whisper in my ear, “I am the Potter.”
I have long been wading in that River of life
desperate to drink the holy water that cleans
Then you whisper in my ear, “I am the water that never ends.”
No I lay me down on the Alter of Holy Rest
Trust my hands to the maker of all that grows
and drink every drop form the River of Life…
oh how Peaceful it is to “be still and know.”
