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

A - Muse

My mom, among many other fun things, has acquired a nickname over the years. She is our grammar police. Spell check and Grammar check can’t hold a candle to her!

When we were kids she would check our homework for school and you could always count on her to stop those participles from dangling and “however” always had its own personal comma.

Well, yesterday she told me something she just noticed. With all her English background and knowledge, she had never seen this before. It was fun to see her face light up as she shared this insight and the reminder that there are still soooo many things right before us that we can learn from, if we’re looking!

It was the word amuse that caught her eye. Everyone one wants to be “amused”, to be entertained and engrossed by our amusements. Our culture is fixated on the pursuit of amusements. We have devices coming out our ears (really coming out our ears) like phones, i-things, TVs, etc. I mean, we have amusement parks, hello?!?! If you really think on it, the level of distraction, disguised as amusement, is staggering.  Well, these five letters jumped off the page to my mom the other day…A-MUSE.

I sat and listened, as she so eloquently explained the Truth in that word revealed to her. (should have recorded it!) I’ll try to relay it here for y’all. You see, the letter “a” is a negative prefix, like “non”, “dis”, “in” and “anti”. So, the root word of amuse isn’t amuse, it is Muse: to consider something thoughtfully, to ponder. That then means that the “a” added to muse, at its Latin core, turns this definition upside down. AMuse: is to not ponder thoughtfully. WOW! I will never look at that little “a” the same again. That is amazing! Hum, amazing…to undo the maze of confusion in our heads?  

We do live in a society consumed with visuals that amuse, but in the inundation of our days, here is a thought to ponder…How many thought-filled moments slip by completely unnoticed in the noise of amusement?  Those superficial seconds that ponder really nothing at all? It is so very easy to fall for the world’s redefining of Truth, but the Truth is...

Amusement is not Joy. 

Amusement cannot replace Peace. 

Amusement will never give us Hope.

I drove home, in my quiet car, so very grateful, thankful for the time at the kitchen table with my mom…just musing over five little letters. Praying we all find a few more musing moments in our days!

Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what He does for us, not by what we are and what we do for Him.

Romans 12:3b ~ The Message

Zeke and me...

So, I just have to share a sweet, encouraging thing God’s done…those “reminder, He’s got a plan” kinda things.

This morning I was looking for a scripture in Ezekiel. It was for something else, non labyrinth related, and I knew what I was looking for was in Ezekiel, but just couldn’t remember the specific reference, other than it was somewhere chapter 40ish. Then I did remember that I had it underlined in an old Bible of mine. SO, I got that out and started looking thru the underlined parts. Well, before I even got to the part I was looking for, this is what I found…

Ezekiel 42:16-20 ~ NIV

 He measured the east side with the measuring rod; it was five hundred cubits. He measured the north side; it was five hundred cubits^; by the measuring rod. He measured the south side; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod. Then he turned to the west side and measured; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod. So he measured the area on all four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide, to separate the holy from the common.

The underlining is mine. It stopped me right there….and that’s why and what I have to share with you. See? This was underlined years ago…pre-labyrinth thinking for me. Waaaaay before this whole thing started, but not for God. I can’t remember why I would have underlined those particular lines, but I did! And now, the labyrinth is on the east side of our house, separate from the rest of the yard, the alley and the street…separate from the common. Because God knew this would all be there one day.

I’ve shared with y’all how the rocks for the paths were already over there, the bamboo was planted in just the right places and all the other things that were “just right”. The beauty that stuck me today was that His word was there before, too. Underlined and all! The book of Ezekiel isn’t one that you hear quoted very often, I know. But, over the years God has used this book of the Bible to assure and encourage me, so this was particularly special to me.

As I have spent the last few days bagging up all the bamboo leaves, it gave me plenty of time to think….and to listen, too. His Word really is living and active and that means now. Not only that It was “active” when it was written, but now ~ today. The only thing that keeps us seeing and living in that “now”, is to be actively reading and studying His Word. Just like the labyrinth, which became buried under leaves so the paths were indistinguishable, our lives do that, too. We get buried under plans and schedules and stuff. It takes effort, intentional effort, to rake out the things that keep us from seeing God’s path for us. And really? We only need to see the next step, not the whole itinerary.

 Now that you have taken care to purify your souls through your submission to the truth, you can experience real love for each other. So love each other deeply from a [pure] heart. ²³ You have been reborn—not from seed that eventually dies but from seed that is eternal—through the Word of God that lives and endures forever.

I Peter 1:22 & 23  ~ The Voice Version

Crunchy Parts

Well, it is raining bamboo leaves right now! In the coming months the giant timber bamboo will begin to push up new shoots and leaf out again, but before that happens…off with the old! We have had several really windy days and I hadn’t realized just how bad it had gotten, until a couple of friends came over to visit the labyrinth for the first time. We could hardly see the path in a few places! So, today I started bagging up the leaves and hopefully that will get things spruced up for summer in the next week or so.

You can see on this leaf just how the bamboo leaves look before they fall. The stark contrast is amazing to me. The dying part of the leaf is striped in the opposite direction and brown, not green and it’s crunchy, not soft. Isn’t that the way of this world? Stuff that comes at us and wants to move in the door doesn’t always have such a stark contrast, tho’ does it? Sometimes it is easy for us to see that “it” is brown and not green and goes in the opposite direction of God, but other times we just don’t notice the crunchy part. I think that’s why God gave us His Word. It is tangible, readable…we just need to be teachable, ‘cuz when we don’t use God’s Word to get to know Him and learn, we limit our learning to our own experiences, yet “our” words cannot contain God.

His word is what is breathing Life into this world of ours. He brings out blooms where we didn’t anticipate, just to remind us, He’s right there. (and probably so we don’t get a big head and think we did it all by ourselves) Just like this ginger blooming...a little early and in a whole lot of shade, God's work in our lives is not diminished by the circumstances around us.

  

Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives.

God himself put it this way:

“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God.
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God.

II Corinthians 6:14-16

Isn’t that beautiful? We have His Word on it, so don’t worry about the crunchy parts, He’ll show them to us and make it clear what needs to get bagged up and tossed out of our lives, His temple! Let's take Him at His Word and hand Him the rake!