THE CONSTANCY OF YOUR COVENANT

It was in the silence and stillness

Away from anyone and everyone

That the inner transformation was done.

No fanfare, no credits

The healing simply came

Day by day and moment by moment

It came in the power of His Presence

Just as it came in the beginning

Those many years ago when You came and sat with me

The impartation of a love so consuming

I was immediately infused with You Spirit

And I have never lost that pure moment of time

No one or no thing can take that moment away from me

No need to define it

No need to defend it

Only the need to live it in all I think, say, and do

I have learned much

I have healed much

All because I have been loved much

By You and You alone

I am eternally grateful for Your faithfulness

And for Your everlasting love

In the constancy of Your covenant with me

I have been made whole

Remade into the me I was designed to be

Inwardly woven and crafted by Your loving hands

I am Yours and You are my God

Forever and ever

Amen

MY FAVORITE THINGS

I love God and I enjoy being in His Presence.  I come to the garden alone, and He walks with me and talks with me, and tells me I am His own.  I enjoy walking in the cool of the day with Him or sitting on the bank of a river, stream, lake, or pond, or by the ocean.  It is just so simple and pure.  I enjoy following Jesus as we walk along His Way, His path.  I enjoy learning from Him; how He encounters others along the way; always compassionate, always fully present to them; healing them, dining with them, enjoying their presence.  In that warmth of love and acceptance many are transformed.  I love being in and watching nature as it speaks to me of the things about God; His sense of beauty and order, and His constant and faithful care of His creation.

I love reading and studying the Bible.  It is the Story of God and reveals how much He loves all that He has created, even when they don’t love Him in return.  It amazes me how loving and faithful He is, constantly seeking those who are lost.  It humbles me to see how forgiving, how compassionate, and how truly He cares about us as people.

It makes me sad when people don’t see that.  It seems so simple to me.  It started out that way with me; simply His love and His Presence.  He walked with me through all my themes and schemes, all my wandering off the path, all my selfish and bad choices.  I have come to a place of simple and sincere satisfaction.  I don’t need or want the things that used to take me off the path and out of the way.  Been there, done that, over it!

Now my long ago dream of sitting in a rocking chair on a porch of a cabin out in the woods, reading and writing insights from Scriptures and simply being in God’s Presence is all I want to do.  “One thing have I desired of the Lord…”  To be with Him where He is staying.  That is all I am seeking.

HE IS ENOUGH

I love the simplicity of God.  He is straight forward and truthful.  Those who simply listen and obey, simply hear.  I love being in a world of wonder and beauty and don’t feel the need to know the whys and wherefores of every little detail.  There is a true profoundness in the simple that is exciting and needs no explanation to enjoy it.  It is enough for me to know that God created all things and He made them all to be good.  It is enough for me to know that He created me and made me to be all good.  It is enough for me to know that God loves me so much that He sent Jesus to die for me and save me from enslavement to this world that has been corrupted by the sin of forsaking the One who created it.

“God made man simple; man’s complex problems

Are of his own devising.”

Humans have sought out many schemes.  The many schemes of human devising have entangled those who make them and those who listen to them into a web of confusion and chaos.  All too often human wisdom and knowledge lead people astray; leads hem to a self centeredness and away from a God centeredness.  I have seen it happen to the “best” of them, who began as true lovers of God; I have seen it happen to me all too many times.  We think we are doing God’s work but it turns into building the tower of Babel again and again, only to have it fall again and again.

Pride and arrogance die hard.  So does the heart that says, “I am, and there is no one besides me” need to be broken again and again.  When I stop and sit in the dust, on the ground without a throne, in silence and stillness, I see the trail of tears that lies behind me were of my own doing; but then I begin to see the faithful Presence of God on the right and on the left of the path. He was there all the time…waiting.

I have come to believe that those many failings of mine were all a part of my growth and God never threw up His hands in disgust or disappointment.  He was walking right along side of me waiting for me to come to my senses.  Behold, what manner of love is that?

I am not perfect yet.  I still have my “me” days.  But they are fewer as the growth of my love for God seeps in deeper and makes me more secure.  I am a root person, a foundation person.  I look at this world where all the foundations that are not built on God are crumbling.  Human schemes and endeavors are the cisterns that were broken and unable to hold water to begin with.  I do not want to mend the cisterns.  I want to drink as the Fountain of Living Water, that has been flowing from the beginning of time and will continue to flow forever.  When my roots soak into that water the fruit will be good.

HIS PRESENCE IS ENOUGH

“One thing have I desired of the Lord,

And that will I seek after;

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord

All the days of my life,

To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

And to inquire in His temple.”

Psalm 27:4

The world is inundated with voices speaking.  The competition to get into the mix is fierce.  Tongues stumble over one another trying to get into the game.  It is overwhelming to the mind and soul to even hear them much less listen and reflect on what is being said.

In the flood of human words God’s words get buried and indistinguishable.   That is the point I must stop and withdraw from the arena.  In the Quiet His words rise in my spirit and I can hear and digest them in my mind, heart, and soul.

I spent many years finding my voice, believing I had something to offer to the conversation many were having about the church, religion, and things of theological worth.  I studied and trained to be able to compete with the other voices, but never found a place at the “adult table”.  I tried not to feel bad about my lack of “the right stuff” but I did, on some level, wondering why.

I remember a lesson I had learned in my younger years when I was encouraged by a teacher to be a professional golfer.  “You could be another Patty Berg” he used to tell me.  I loved sports and played many because I enjoyed the games.  But I found when I was working to make it a profession I wasn’t enjoying it.  I was worried about my performance and stressed about the competition.  As Ben and Jerry say, “If it isn’t fun why do it?”  I stopped working on a lucrative career and just went back to playing the game.

I love spending time in the mornings just simply being in God’s Presence, having coffee, communion and conversation with Him then and throughout the day.  I delighted in the insights He shared with me and discovering answers to the questions I asked.  When I tried to “Professionalize” that, it changed my inner feeling of joy and began to feel like a job.  Seeing my old friend Brian last week reinforced that difference in my mind. 

I seek God’s Presence for the deep joy of it, not to get something out of it.  I found myself missing that joy and wanting it back.  I don’t want to be another voice in the sea of voices.  I want to be His kid and enjoy His Presence and delight in our communion and conversation.  I am not aiming at being a ‘professor of faith’ but being a knowledgeable and faithful prayer, an invisible under girder of others and this world.  I want to be like Anna and Simeon who saw Jesus as an infant and knew who He was because they were silently and secretly waiting for Him, as they spent their time in the temple, in God’s House, in His Presence.

GOD IS SOVEREIGN & FAITHFUL

“You keep her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You,

Because she trusts in You.  Trust in the Lord forever,

For the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Isaiah 26:3,4

The faithfulness of God is seen daily, in the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun; in the rising of the moon and the setting of the moon.  Since the beginning of time this has been the way it has been.  It is a simple truth but to me it is an amazing thing, worthy of my attention.

The world can have its anxt in these times of chaos and confusion.  But my mind is stayed n the beauty and majesty of a faithful God who created a world of wonder.

All those who feel they have something to say are talking much.  I feel the need to simply be silent and still in God’s Presence, for He is a rock above all the waves of the storms of life.

(Stayed: to remain, to stop, to wait, to endure; a support or brace.)

My mind is stayed on God, the God who is steadfast, fixed, steady, loyal, and constant.  He alone is my safety and security.  There is no other.  In the end there will be no need of the sun or moon to rise and set, for the glory of God Himself will give its light and the Lamb will be the lamp, just as He was in the beginning.  That is the light that shines in the darkness that the darkness can never and will never overcome.

In this hour of apparent darkness in this country, when all seems lost, God brought forth a Super Full Moon to bring light.  I find this to be a testimony to the truth that God is sovereign and in complete knowledge and control of all things.