PeaceFULLness

 It was soooo very still in the labyrinth yesterday. The fallen bamboo leaves crunched under my feet so loudly I thought I would wake up the neighborhood! But that stillness just made the sweet coo of the whitewing even more tender sounding. At first I thought maybe I should go back for my clippers, too! The duranta and bamboo branches were hanging lowly all over the paths. But, as often happens here, this was just another sweet reminder to slow down, pause and lift the branch, then move on. This Good Friday was peaceFull. Contrary to what Good Friday is all about, I was acutely aware of the peaceFullness of these moments.

Earlier in the week I had written a note to myself and this thought hasn’t finished mulling around in my head. In our busy, distraction based world we somehow think that “if” God has something to say He will get our attention, instead of us giving Him ours. 

This looks different for everyone, for me prayer time in the labyrinth is one way to give Him my full attention…and this day was so very Peace-filled.

PeaceFULLness ~ that was the word (yes, spelled just like that in my head) that came to me in those first few crunchy steps. I just let the whitewing sing me in the door.

It is this PeaceFullness of living with Christ ~ made possible by the void, our souls given over to His sacrifice. He bore it all on the cross –all- not only the sins so obvious to us, the ones so blatantly walking with death, but those in the shadow of death. The Light of His sacrifice reveals those “good” things that tempt and so slyly separate us from Christ.

This Good Friday is the day we remember His sacrifice for us. And He paid for all that lies in our souls that is not of Him, not holy-bound ~ the void He creates in our very souls is where His PeaceFULLness comes to reside. It is where the Fullness of Christ breathes Life into a once sin-sick soul. We have the opportunity in the void to allow God’s will to overflow into us, because He will never manipulate or coerce ~ True Love cannot. We cannot “live” in the void, because death dwells there in its many disguises. True Love, God’s Love, His Grace pours out and heals for the “soul” purpose of a restoration that speaks of its PeaceFullness in Christ ~ the celebration that comes with Easter Sunday!

I John 4:4-6 ~ The Voice Version

My children, you have come from God and have conquered these spirits because the One who lives within you is greater than the one in this world.  But they are of this world, and they articulate the views of the corrupt world, which the world understands.  We come from God, and those who know God hear us. Whoever is not from God will not listen to us. This is the way we discern the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

Swallows

Psalm 84:1-4 ~ The Amplified Version

How lovely are Your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!

My soul yearns, yes, even pines and is homesick 

for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and my flesh cry out and sing for joy 

to the living God.

Yes, the sparrow has found a house, 

and the swallow a nest for herself, 

where she may lay her young—

even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are those who dwell in Your house and Your presence; 

they will be singing Your praises all the day long.

Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

A journal of first thoughts ~

Today, on this very windy day, I was walking the labyrinth and fully intended to read thru the whole of Psalm 84, but oh then Selah happened…with the chachalacas keeping an eye on things.

The picture of the swallow still lingers in my head. This “mom”, of God’s creation, was nesting in the temple. Yet, in those times, birds of all types were given as sacrifices. So, tho’ her home was there in God’s house and her children were to be raised there, there was no safety attached to their physical location. Quite the contrary!

But, verse 4 says, “Blessed” ~ she was blessed to be in Your house and in Your presence, as that is a forever existence, not ending by life here on earth. She will sing her song in Your house, forever in Your presence ~ so, no matter our circumstance, when our soul is nested at Your alter, we are forever blessed to be singing with the swallows.

~ Selah … Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

The Gate

 The Gate is finished!!!!

I have had the picture of this gate in my head for…ev...er!!! Today I finally got to work on it. Must say, it was easier that I thought it would be! Just knocked off a few slats from an old pallet and sandwiched a piece of tin roof between. The little blue bird was on a bird feeder that my sister gave me years ago, and I like it here now. The gate swings on a couple of brand new hinges that I found at Habitat today for $2…for the pair!!! It swings shut nicely and doesn’t even have to be latched. The idea was to have a way to visually enclose the labyrinth without really walling things off too much. 

Mission accomplished!

Now that I think about it, that makes more sense than I thought! We’re supposed to be like that, too….set apart, separated with Christ, but still living and active in this world. We aren’t supposed to wallow in things that would not honor Christ, but we shouldn’t be so walled off we can’t see to go where He may want to send us to serve.

There are a lot of things that wall us off, too! I’ve just started a book study with a group of friends. The book is called The Good and Beautiful Life by James Bryan Smith. He opens this book talking about something that he calls our narratives. Those are what I call our filters, those things that we sift the rest of the world thru. He makes some wonderful points throughout the book about how to examine our narratives and make sure they are the narratives of Christ. We are human, after all, and it is soooo easy to erect walls and shut gates that were never meant to be there…and sadly, be perfectly ok with it.  

 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Matthew 7:3

OK, so that verse has nothing to do with a gate, but it sure shows us how we can miss the gate altogether! We have all had it happen to us…so easy to see a problem, or habit, or something in a friend’s life, but totally miss the MAJOR obstacle in our own lives. It all goes back to perspective, tho’. That personal plank of ours juts out from us ~ Just picture it for a second…every time we make a move in life it is jutting out there ready to throttle the world. 

We can’t “notice” our own plank without help, without our allowance of another’s voice. So, today I’m asking my Carpenter to get the crow bar out and start pulling planks…

Swing wide the city gates—the righteous gates!
    I’ll walk right through and thank God!
This Temple Gate belongs to God,
    so the victors can enter and praise.

Thank you for responding to me;
    you’ve truly become my salvation!

Psalm 118:19-21 ~ The Message Version

Isaiah 55

 “Come…”

This morning God blessed my inbox with a special gift. A friend of mine shared her morning devotional time via an audio file. It wasn’t something pre-printed that she read, it was 22 minutes of absolute joy, listening as she shared her soul’s thoughts on lent. First, thank you Lord for putting such wonderful gifts of friendship in my life…my cup overflows!

One of the Scriptures that she read was Isaiah 55. I can’t really pinpoint the why or wherefore, but the book of Isaiah has always spoken to my soul in a very special way….that’s one for God to answer at another time. Oh, but today! One of the things you’re taught when learning to learn about Scripture is to meditate on a certain passage. My way of explaining that process is to just sit and soak. This isn’t about responding with a dissertation, it is about allowing His Word to flow past our responses and over our objections and thru our perceptions, in order to get all the way down to our soul’s ear. That place that we hear from when God whispers and we feel like a tornado just went by…that’s mediating.

So, today Isaiah 55: 1 starts…Come…and I couldn’t read further. It struck me, is there really anything more than that? You know, just Come. That’s all there is….He does the rest. He holds us, leads us, heals us, loves us! We just have to come. At times, that part may seem unreachable to us, but not really. Thinking on all this, a kind of picture came to mind. We only need to lift that one foot to take a step, we don’t even have to complete the stepping, HE spans the chasm we envision and lifts us to Himself. It is His reach that rescues us from the things of this world that seek after our soul…

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
    he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy…

Psalm 18:16 & 17a

As for Isaiah 55? (when you do read on) I just love that it begins with an invitation…

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare.

Isaiah 55:1 &2

Before God does anything here, He invites us all to Himself. It doesn’t say to bring anything, or get something done first, or anything…just come, period. Verse two is an invitation to us also, don’t ya think? God invites us to peer into our own soul with Him, to look at our motivations, our life’s prompts and ask  “why”. It really is only by His revealing that we can see the truth about ourselves. It says so right there… Listen, listen to me…  Not me listen to me, but me listen to Him! It is in the listening that we receive the Grace that moves our steps. Discernment, vision, Truth ~ they are all gifts of our God when we just come.