May our hearts and minds continue to birl away from self and move through the currents of this world, carried by His Word, to the eternal embrace of our Saviour, Christ Jesus.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Follow the Son ~



This is my view from afar, when I look up over the roof to see the bamboo in the labyrinth. Do you see how it looks this afternoon? All of the new shoots are leaning toward the west! They were not like that earlier in the day. Leaning, bending, bowing, stretching…call it what you want, but isn’t that cool? In the space of a day they have changed direction!!!
This tall, rigid, strong Giant Timber Bamboo follows the sun. It yields itself to the follow the sun and as a result receives its own nourishment and growth. Think about that for a second! Can you imagine what the earth would look like if all the plants didn’t yield to The Creator for sustenance? What if all the bamboo wanted was water? It just didn’t feel like stretching over the roof to reach out after the sun?
 
Actually too much water is exactly what happened to this little stalk during all that rain we had a month ago. It couldn’t get to the sun, so it didn’t make it.

My sheep respond as they hear My voice; I know them intimately, and they follow Me.
John 10:27
(The Voice Version)
The Voice translation of the Bible is new to me. If you haven’t read much in it, you should try it out! One of the focuses (short version) is to help in getting the nuisances from Scripture that we may otherwise miss.
One of the words that jump out to me here is ‘respond’. It doesn’t just say we hear His voice, there is an element of action as we hear. It makes perfect sense, as I think about it. As kids we ‘hear’ our parent’s voice, but don’t necessarily listen. (ok, so perhaps that wasn’t you, but definitely me, unfortunately!) This Scripture says that at the ‘hearing’ of His voice there is a response. Perhaps, the first response is one of listening?  (insert big 'duh' here!!!) We cannot fully follow The Son, all day, changing our direction, unless we’re actually listening. And ya know what? That’s not easy and it certainly isn’t automatic for me! Strong, rigid, set-in-my-ways kind of thinking doesn’t usually set me up to follow places that are not already on my “list of things to do today”, ya know!

Anyone who serves Me must follow My path; anyone who serves Me will want to be where I am,
and he will be honored by the Father.
John 12:26 
…Will want to be where I am. Stretching, leaning, bowing in order to Follow the Son!

Monday, October 14, 2013

Sluff



It took my breath away this morning….coming around the corner of the duranta bush, this met my gaze and jumped in my heart!
 
Look at all the stuff sluffing off the bamboo and littering the ground. The rains have stopped and these shoots are pushing to the sky so fast you can almost sit and watch them grow!
The ground is covered with these pieces of the protective covering that they started out with…you got it, hence the “jump in my heart” part.

That’s how God does it with us, isn’t it? HE peels off the stuff we started out with, moves us from baby steps to big people steps. He knows best when it is time to take those things He has taught us and move on, encourage us to grow closer to Him and use what we know thru His teachings.
We can have the blessing of helping to sluff our own stuff, tho’! (btw, that’s sluff, not strut )
Back to sluffing… I love to recycle and re-purpose things. When I see something old and discarded, my mind goes on autopilot thinking of things to do with it. It is fun to me to take something discarded and create a new purpose for it…but sometimes, God just wants me to sluff. He wants us take those ‘bigger’ steps with Him. And oh, how my heart wants to hold on to the sluff of life when I shouldn’t!
And it has been a real season of sluffing for me. Stuff I didn’t even know was “stuff”, needs to get sluffed out of the way of my growing with God. Our human hearts will always be ruled by something. (cherry pie comes to mind here!) Anyway, you get the point…we humans are easily led, distracted and deceived and probably most of the time, we’re not even aware of it.
For some of us, it is part of growing up in ‘church’. We have all the right vocabulary and the phrases, but they do not necessarily get connected to specific action. We get confused in our reasoning about some “thing”, and because we can reason it out, then it becomes ok…in ‘church’ speak, that means justifying our behaviour.  But really, we’re only justified thru Christ, period.

Honestly, I really don’t like that there is such a thing as eating too much cherry pie, but there is AND as it turns out, it is better for me not to eat cherry pie every single day of my life. God does give us choices tho’! We can dive into the pie or, we sluff on! Let’s litter the ground together.

God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.
Ephesians 4:15 & 16

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Created Space ~




I am sooooo excited! Today I got to work on the path leading toward the labyrinth. During all this ‘construction’, I have slopped thru the mud, or tracked in the dusty dirt from this portion of things. But, yes, today the mud is gone and these lovely, big stepping stones are there instead. In this pic, I had just washed them down and gotten all the mud off the little pebbles…it just glimmered in the sun. Perfect, now there will be no more tramping thru the mud for anyone that comes over from now on!
I glanced back and found this pic from the beginning of the labyrinth taking shape. Truth be told, there really wasn’t much of a plan. Just to spend a couple hours a day (too hot for this girl to put in much more time than that!) clearing things out and then, Poof!, there would be a labyrinth, right?
Well, I had a thought today, as I was in a hurry to move all the buckets of pebbles, and it just made me laugh out loud. This reminded me of another ‘hurry’ feeling I had a few years ago when I was making one of my first prayer shawls. I thought I needed to hurry, that this woman friend really needed this shawl…I mean, she was going thru a really rough time after all! That was when I felt it, this thought, a prompt from deep in my soul that said, “no, she needs the prayers.”
Be still and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10
See? Oh, how often I get caught in the thing I am doing and forget all about its purpose, or don’t even look for it in the first place…God’s purpose in things. If you would have told me 5 months ago that this ‘thing’ of a labyrinth was going to be such a project, I would have thought you were crazy! But, God has, as He always does, used His time wisely. It does help that He isn’t constrained by it in the first place! 
This has definitely taken shape from the inside out! What a blessing to watch it unfold and move out to these steps that lead in. It’s the same with us. God begins His work within and it transforms us inside to out. One of the beauties of this is that the same outward path works inwardly, too. Those outgoing soul steps He creates, He then pours other people and experiences into us, as we open up to them. His perfect design moves mercifully as the tides, to fill and to feed our souls in every step.

God didn’t contrive some manipulated plan to get things done, He created space for His purpose to be revealed. In addition to His creation of the physical realm we live in, there is also soul space. That is where we sit at His feet to learn, laugh and Love. He has spoken and taught me in totally new ways these last few months…I pray the same for you, too.
So, as the days begin to cool off, please know you are welcome to come walk the labyrinth and spend a little “created time” of your own here.
In the beginning, God created…
Genesis 1:1

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Resonating ~



There is a sweet sound wafting in the first morning breezes! When I hear those low bass tones, I know it is here ~ Fall!
We have several wind chimes in the yard, all ringing out in the same key, but the large bass ones only gong in a north wind and with that sound, my heart resonates. Soon, the heat of summer will be gone and the crisp air of fall will bring in new birds and lovely butterflies. Mmmm, my favourite season is almost here!

I am glad this season is “announced” with such a pleasant gong and not a clang! Tho’ our chimes do clang, that is the noise we hear when a storm comes in, or a hot wind from the south. FYI, clanging is not an indication of a good thing!
It is not so good when I clang either, Scripture tells us...

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  (NIV)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.  (The Message)
I Corinthians 13:1

I really like both versions of this verse, ‘cuz either way, our words should resonate with God and to others! 

We should open gently to their hearts, not be cranky, crusty and rusty! Our words have the opportunity to speak Life into our world…every time we open our mouths. That is what we are here for ~ to walk with God, praise Him, keep company with Him. It is important to know if we’re clanging…ya know, listen to our own selves. Those clanging words are an indication of something in my heart that needs to get tuned in with God’s heart, because when we “clang”, the world doesn’t hear Jesus, or the introduction of new life, new season, new Love.
You may have read this verse a thousand times, but just one more…slowly this time.
 Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails…
I Corinthians 13:4-8a

A while back, as I read this verse, I noticed something that really spoke to me again. It says Love is not that Love might be one day, or if you work at it maybe, nope, it is
AND Love is always not that Love is sometimes, or occasionally, and most definitely not something “we” muster up. A very wise friend of mine told me today that we humans equate love to happiness. If we love there is a “happy” element. But God loves always. Circumstances, words, attitudes of our heart do not change His love for us.




Love is Who He is always. 
His Love resonates with our hearts, speaks Life into our souls…always. 
We may delight, or grieve our Father, we may come to Him praising or pouting and none of this changes 
His Love for us….always.