These Steps

IT IS SUMMER!!!! The last couple of weeks have really brought in the summer heat…103F, for my friends up north! Well, that has kept me in the a/c a bit more, but today was nice and windy so out I went. What a wonderful surprise waited for me, too! The first new bamboo shoots are shooting up this year. This kind of bamboo is a clumping bamboo, but you still never know just where the new shoots will pop up. 

AND it was sooooo cool to see that the sego has pushed out new growth. It is still fighting the scale disease, but new growth is a great sign! It all just reminded me how God is always working, even when we’re just seeing the heat or disease or whatever…He’s getting things done in the midst of all that.

I often think how funny we humans are, I mean really! We so easily think we wander aimlessly thru life, or wonder which step to take next…all as if we’re on our own. These steps, the ones I just took to sit in this chair, they’re on only one path – the walk with Jesus path. All of us, from the moment we first met Him, each step ~ our paths ~ reach to our God’s throne room. These are our first steps, the life steps that lead us to the Holy of Holies. Every step is known before taken, every path anchored in the destination ~ not the departure. That’s a precious Truth to anchor our perspective in!

Surrounded then as we are by these serried ranks of witnesses, let us strip off everything that hinders us, as well as the sin which dogs our feet, and let us run the race that we have to run with patience, our eyes fixed on Jesus the source and the goal of our faith. For he himself endured a cross and thought nothing of its shame because of the joy he knew would follow his suffering; and he is now seated at the right hand of God’s throne. Think constantly of him enduring all that sinful men could say against him and you will not lose your purpose or your courage.

Hebrews 12:1-3

Nothing we do can separate us from the Love of Christ, Who walked this path, that we may also. Everyone of our steps have purpose, because they are taking us Home. The way of this path is not always clear to us, it can seem confusing and messy. AND we all know, if we’re honest, that we wander off to places God never intended us to go…but He goes with us into the “unintended” and shapes that path with His grace-filled steps. He fills the “unintended” with His mercy and for His glory and that is where we find purpose - because He is there – in every moment, every step, every breath. We, His earth bound temple, live in holy consecrated space. Oh, that we would tread gratefully in that Truth and with every step draw nearer Home.

I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing Him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is He is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life He has for His followers, oh, the utter extravagance of His work in us who trust Him—endless energy, boundless strength!

Ephesians 1:16-19 ~ Phillips New Testament