WONDER

WONDER

Today's prompt for Five-Minute Friday is wonder.   hmm...what comes to my thoughts today as I think of wonder.

I wonder (am curious) how it is that each day can be new?  What a wondrous thought.  Each day involves a night then the glorious sun rises and the day begins anew.  How wonderful of our Creator.  He knew that our bodies would need rest, our brains a break, our hearts a repose.  He knew that the greenery of the earth would need rest from the sun's heat, that animals need to sleep.

Then in the wee hours of morn the dew visits to bring refreshment to the greenery, a moist facial to the soft petals of the flowers.  Oh the wonder-

the splendor.

I wonder that as the flowers receive refreshment from the coolness of night and the dew of early morning, as my mind and body rests through dream upon my bed, I wonder at His mercies being NEW to me every morning as well.  EVERY morning of every day that you and I take breath His mercies are there to greet us- and they are new.  They are fresh.  His compassions like that He has for His creation are there faithfully waiting for us every....new....day.  Oh, the wonder; GREAT is Your faithfulness.


What makes you wonder today?



Tell us as you link up to 5-Minute Fridays with the Gypsy Mama and I.

It is better...

"It is better to go to a house of mourning

than to go to a house of feasting,

 for death is the destiny of every man;

the living should take this to heart."

~Ecclesisates 7:2 (NIV)

I was in the house of mourning yesterday.  Among family and strangers I sat at the funeral service of a distant relative.  My grief was not so strong and near because of the loss of this precious person to me, rather I shared the grief of her closest family, the heaviness of their loss of one so dear.  I have felt that kind of grief.  The kind that makes the phrases, "broken hearts".  The kind that feels like your insides are being ripped  or you feel so hollow inside- a space that will not be filled again.  I sympathized with them.

The orator of the service read most appropriate scriptures of having faith in Jesus to resurrect our bodies unto everlasting life.  I ruminated the spiritual state of the souls in his audience.  I silently prayed that His words would be heard by them enough to make a saving difference. 

It is better to go to the house of mourning.  Do you think that strange?  Probability states that you have already visited one or will soon.  I sat in the house of mourning yesterday and I got it.  To leave her rooms without understanding would be almost impossible.  Especially when there lay spread before you a body.  A dead body.  No life what so ever in it.  A carcass really.  But because of the dignity of the human life in which it encased we do not use that word.  To those whose lives intertwined with hers that body represented life- a cherished life filled with stories, memories.  But the breath of life was taken from the body into the next chapter.  That was evident.

We grieve. Yet not without HOPE.  We have hope because we have FAITH that He who says we will be resurrected will indeed DO it for us.  Yet, the shortness of this life is also so blatantly evident.  A flower quickly fading.  I get it.  I am remembering today to ask the Lord to "teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom".  (Psalm 90:12)  

The "house" in the above scripture is synonymous with "family".  It means a dwelling of great containment literally or figuratively- to obtain children.  Yesterday, the day was spent reminiscing and sharing events and hearts with one another, meeting new generations.  All that matters is PEOPLE.  In the end when this chapter of our lives is complete all that will have mattered is relationships.  Our relationship with our Father.  Our relationships with those closest to our hearts.  Our relationships with fellow human beings.  

Death is the end of every man but it is also just the beginning.  I want to live now in such a way that my loved ones will want to be persons in the same chapters with me.



Walk with Him... I am linking up today.

UPlifted Heart

I am in my kitchen making my firstborn a cheesy, ham omelet for his eighteenth birthday-breakfast.  Have this song playing (I will share the link below)- my heart is uplifted.

Just before this I scripted the very last page of the hard back journal that I had started the day he was born.  The journal is written in letter style directly to him.  Over these eighteen years I would write an entry when he would do something cute or funny, something BIG happened, or always on every birthday.  As I  reminisced of that very first day that my eyes looked in awe upon his very round, bald head, I was touched with emotion.

Oh, yes, how the years have flown.  Sigh.  That wee babe is now a man.

That innocence.  All but for the human naivety in all of us is gone.

So many hopes I had then for him.  So many dreams to be realized.  Yet in this parenting journey I have learned that children are not empty vessels for us to stuff with our ideals and credence; they, as we, are clay that can only be influenced by us, by life, by Him.  They are their own vessel- His, not mine.

Oh, how I have learned this the hard way.  His choices made that trail in the opposite direction of what I would want for him.  My heart is still in pieces, but I trust that it will mend.

There is always HOPE until Jesus says otherwise.

So here I am flipping the omelet, tears fall, heart aches, love flows.  A million words I think of to advise him at this hallmark moment of his- yet he already knows- so I quiet myself and give him a hug.

I wonder if It will all work out in the end.  The final end.  I can only hope that God moves.  And because I know that He IS FoR me I sing this song heart aching, voice blazing, mind uplifted.

Is there something for which you ache?  You hope?

Play this song- you know it,  I have had it posted here before-  listen to the words, let them sink, and let your heart be lifted and sing unabashedly!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1SAtWjBDFeM

Every Day- A Pearl in the Making

The 5 Minute Friday- a delicious morsel of words...

EVERY DAY-
I love the consistency of those two words together.  Like pearls strung on a rope.  If I do not get it (put your own word in there- "get it- done, right") then I have the promise of the pearl of tomorrow.

Every day I will look for God's gracious hand painting strokes of His mural- the story of our lives.

Every day I search for Beauty whereby my heart can be lifted and I can give thanks to its Creator.

Every day I always have a "to do" list but I much rather work on the looking and searching.

Every day I am being formed into a pearl for His glory.

So are you-
So if you feel pressed, stroked, accosted, rubbed the wrong way- it is for your good and His glory.

Every Day.

STOP.

Visit here to meet other Pearls.

A Drop of Water for the Dry Sponge

If you have read the been reading my recent posts, you are aware that I am going through SOMETHING.  I am not one to be verbal about my sorrows; moreover, I do not seek sympathy by spreading my turmoils among friends.  Instead I retreat.  I go inward.  I go to a place where I eventually meet GOD.  He heals me.  He restores me. He picks me up.  And sometimes He even gives me eagles wings so that am enabled to SOAR above my circumstance. (Isaiah 40: 28-31)

Right now though I am a place that is so unfamiliar, so desolate.  A wilderness that seems to have no end to the chaos.  As I meditate it has been about two years now of this arduos journey...through the wilderness, through the desert.  Maybe one or two stops on the high hills.  But it has been so long since I have soared among the mountain peaks that I do not think I could remember how to soar even if I had those eagle's wings placed upon me now.

Two years ago my oldest son was 15.  The second to oldest son was 14.  That is all I will say about them....

My last journal entry I was exhausted- drained- from the depths of my soul, from my head to my toes.  I felt led to post that diary entry of mine.  It has now been about a week and I wanted to continue sharing with you my journey.

I have been feeling like a dry sponge.  Do you know what I mean?  A natural sponge from the sea is meant to absorb water- to be full- and to be expressed- poured out.  Jesus said that "everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13)   I can say that most of my Christian life I have been a sponge full of Life pouring out water, being filled again, and again.  Squeezing myself so that drops of liquid spiritual healing may wet the sponges that I come into contact with.  That is my purpose to be full so that I might be emptied.

But presently, I have felt like a DRY sponge.  Have you ever touched one?  They are hard, brittle, full of holes, and not in their natural state.

THAT is how I have been feeling of late.

There is nothing in me to give.

I am dry.

I am empty.

I have been hardened.

I am not in my usual, natural state.

If I parallel this to my soul-world, I could say that I feel completely undone.  Have you ever been there?  I think that this might be my first time experiencing this in this way.  It is like I feel flat. -almost hollow .  This is the state people crave release by the sweet kiss of death.  I can understand that now.

But for HIS GRACE.

He gently, ever so gently, like the soft rustling of the wind in the grass whispers, "This is where I want you to be- empty."

But Father, "I am parched.  Dry. Cracked.  Relieve me of the fiery serpents and scorpions.  Bring me out of this wilderness and thirsty ground where there is no water."

"Your sorrow is from an other's sin; this place, I leave you here.  But I AM with you."

"It does not feel like it Lord!"

Drop.

Drop.

Drop.

A drop of water.  Liquid healing.  Sustenance.  I have been feeling the drops.  Only one a day maybe.  Drops of grace.  A word of encouragement.  A scripture of promise.   A heart that understands.  Just a few drops.  Small relief for a thirsty soul.  But though one small drop of the water molecule does not quench my thirst or take the dry cracks from my soiled heart, it does promise Hope, Comfort, and Joy.

Hope- that with Him all things are possible.

Comfort- that He has not left me to my own demise.

Joy- that He is with me and loves me with so great a Love. 

Jesus was wounded for my transgressions.  He sorrowed over my sin.  Is this what I am to learn? to share in some minscule way an understanding of what He endured for me? And that to be FULL I must be EMPTY?  I feel really empty.  I do not think that I consciously could have ever taken my psyche to this state on my own.  It has been the desert, the scorpions that have taken me to a place of un-doneness.  I am undone.

The dry sponge drinks in the drop...day after day now there has been a "plunk" of another drop.  I trust that He will saturate me again.  That I will be a watered garden again.  I trust that the Lord shall, "guide me continually and satisfy me in this drought and make strong my bones.  I will be a spring of water whose waters fail not." (Isaiah 58:11)

I even trust that He will rain a deluge over my soul.

But for now, I trust and quaff each drop waiting for the next.