Grace and Salt and Love

The face glanced in my direction. For a split second that has been etched in my mind, the pain and worry was apparent. The wrinkled forehead and sad eyes that met mine. I realized that although I did not know her troubles nor she mine, we shared the same facial expression. Darling Spouse and I were deep in a conversation on the ride home from church on Sunday, when we passed the lady and her companion. My heart immediately felt for her, and then I examined my own expression. Not much better. How was I supposed to shine forth Christ's love with such a painful and worried expression?

I see this look on people's faces more and more. Anxious, not knowing what the future holds. Fear of the unknown. The look of someone who does not know the heavenly Father, who deeply loves and cherishes us. Who does not know the Son who is this very minute in heaven preparing a room for us in a place that has no weeping, or fear. Who does not know the peace that comes with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Someone who doesn't know grace or mercy, or salvation. Why do we need to worry about our external trappings? Houses, cars, clothes..... Clothes?.... Why do you worry about these things? Does He not clothe the lilies of the field which are here today and frostbit tomorrow? Does He not cherish His children much more then lilies?

I feel the need to reach out to people. I want to share the Truth so they can be set free. But who would listen to me with my face just as worried as theirs? I need to fix my heart and mind on my eternal home and leave behind the pains and fears. They are not mine, I have given them away.

We are to speak with grace seasoned with salt and love. But what comes from the mouth is an outpouring of the heart. If my heart is wrapped up in the things of this world how can it? My thoughts need to be changed to thoughts of Grace and Salt and Love. I need to read and study and memorize the scriptures more and more. Thank you MamaLadyBug, for knowing what we need. : )

A.

what is it???

OK It's driving me nuts. We were talking at work about Christmas and symbols and what they mean. So wow here is my chance to talk about Jesus being the light, the lamb, pure as snow and all the other things. So one gal and I are explaining the candy cane and the jingle bell. THEN some one says there is a legend of a cardinal. Well, I've never heard this. We did a web search and are coming up empty the best I found was at a Christian gift site abbeypress.com it says something about doves watching Jesus. SO...how do we get to a cardinal?? Anyone know? It's bugging me.

Marines turn to God

Pray for our men and women in Iraq. Here's one report of revival going on among the ranks. : D



Marines turn to God: "'I just wanted to make sure I did this before I headed into the fight,'
he said on the military base not far from the city of Fallujah."


Bless 'em, Lord!

it's been a while

It has been a while since i posted. I can say i have had some ups and downs. Tears and smiles. The Lord gives and takes. If you can adjust to that prinicipal then you can accept life. I have had some dark what is my purpose days and some bright God is gret days. They balance.
I will say I am spiritually hungry for some meat. Lately I have been getting crusts of bread. But I want the meat. So ladies you are missed. My spiritual stomach is grumbling like a baby who has been switched to solid food and then all of a sudden placed back on milk.
Soon I need fed.

Savor

This afternoon, having come home exhausted, I napped a few minutes, got up and made some coffee, sat down and read this article. Peggy Noonan is a favorite writer of mine. She was a speechwriter for Reagan, and has opined conservatively (and beautifully) for the Wall Street Journal for years. So go grab a cup of tea or coffee (peach tea, Mamaladybug), settle down and follow the link.
OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan


And after you've read the article, here's one more thing to savor: In the past few weeks, more believers have found their way to their knees to pray for the country than we've seen since post September 11th. Many prayed for a Bush victory, some prayed for a Kerry victory, most prayed for God's will for America. But the point is, many of Christ's people, who are called by His name, humbled themselves, prayed, and sought God's face, and in the process found themselves changed--finding the faults and turning away from them. Haven't I heard that somewhere? What's the rest of the verse? Oh, ye-a-h--IF they do that, "...then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land." Savor.

And Selah.


(II Chronicles 7:14)

Voting Day

It's about 2:00 US central time as I write this, and my day started early. I got out to the poll as soon as it opened, since I go to work about that time anyway. To my (pleasant) surprise, there was no line waiting. I walked right in and voted. There was no nastiness at the poll, although I had to drive around quite a number of signs that had been ripped up and thrown in the road (mostly Republican, I might say).

People at the poll were quite pleasant. I was the first to vote in my district. : ) I was offered the traditional "I voted" sticker, and I accepted. I've turned it down in the past, thinking it just a little ostentatious. This time, though, I thought of Afghan voters who proudly displayed their stained thumbs. Voting is a good thing. Democracy, I think, is a gift from God. So I proudly wore my sticker this year.

When I got to school, I was asked in EVERY class who I voted for. I explained to the kids that part of the political process was the right to not have to say who you voted for. But then I told them I voted for the issues important to me--morality and security. I got a lot of smiles.

My 2nd-3rd grade class is quite active politically. And quite conservative, I might add. Most of them had homemade Bush bumper stickers taped to their desks. And taped to their lockers. And taped to their tummies and rear ends. I felt a little sorry for the Democratic intern from the local University who came in to help out with their reading. She told them who she voted for. As I was leaving, I think their homeroom teacher was heading off a riot. Anyhow--they may need some help with appropriate response to differing opinions, but I'm glad they're engaged politically.

Am anxiously praying. My hubbie struggles to understand God's place in the political process, and thus tends to wonder, "Why pray?" Is God on one side and not on the other? Probably not, actually. But I think of Joshua in the run-up to the big battle of Jericho. He ran into an angel in the night, standing there with a drawn sword. He asked the angel whose side he was on--ours or theirs. The angel said, "Neither. I'm commander of God's army." With all the help God gave the Israelites you would have thought He was on their side. But I guess God thinks about things more accurately than we do. THEY were on GOD's side. HE was not automatically on THEIR side. And so it is with the political process. HE is not affiliated with the Republicans or the Democrats. HE is not exclusively on the side of the football player who kneels and prays in the end zone after a touchdown. But HE sees when WE are on HIS side. And so He blesses us. So I think it's important to be looking carefully at which side aligns itself more closely with God. And that's why I'm confident that my prayers matter today.

Whatever happens--God is with us. Emmanuel.

Beauty and the Blood

This is a strange time in my life. In some ways this is a dry time--very little sense of the personal presence of God. Fortunately, I have learned not to depend on feelings. Fickle things, those feelings. Like children needing to be herded and controlled as best we can.

Here's another way to look at our feelings about God. Think of a train with one engine, one car and one caboose. The engine that runs the train is "fact." The second car is "faith." And finally, at the end of the train, "feelings." The fact is, I'm blood-bought, and Christ paid the price to redeem me. As previously posted, my "self" is now the temple of the living God. He is with me. Period. So the second part, the car of the train, is "faith." The reason faith is not the engine is that you can have faith in all sorts of silly things. Bambino curses--that sort of thing. A rabbit's foot in the pocket, the need for a certain team to win their last home game in order for the incumbent to win the election--I actually heard that one this weekend. So you have to have your faith following a factual thing. The fact--I'm blood-bought. God is present in my life. I have faith in the presence of God, and one of these days, that "feeling" caboose will catch up.

Anyway, here's the thing. Although there's no measurable sense of the presence of God in my life, I see the evidence in profound ways. Like the way my church and my outside-of-church Bible study keep saying the same things.

Last week at Bible study we were talking about the tabernacle and the Holy of holies. I remember last year we were working on some artsy things at church and were struck by how God annointed the artists who built the furniture in the tabernacle.

When I was little my dad, a pastor, bought and built a little paper model of the tabernace. It was fascinating to me. He used model airplane paint to coat the bronze altar bronze and the Ark of the Covenant gold. I remember being especially taken with the glittery gold Ark, with the little angels facing one another, their wings touching overhead. It seemed such a beautiful thing. So all my life I've held this image of a sparkling gold Ark of the Covenant, where somehow the Spirit of God lived, and once a year a high priest would go in and perform some sort of duty which was vague in my mind, but he got to see that beautiful thing that had been built by some annointed artisan.

Then last week we were talking about that ritual the high priest performed. Get this! He splattered the pretty ark with blood. Seven times. Every year. Think about it. Year after year, splatter after splatter, the layer of dried blood built up, until the beutiful Ark became a grim spectacle. Imagine the High Priest. Every year the big Day of Atonement would get here, a day of dread, because every time you entered that room you took your life into your own hands. Or into God's hands. Because if you touched the altar, you died. If you went in without washing properly, you died. So in the back of his mind, there had to be a certain amount of dread associated with that task. With the scene set by an undercurrent of dread, you tiptoed in to be faced with the image of two blood-covered angels standing guard over the Presence of God. Because who would dare go in there and clean the Ark? Forty years of blood covered it, transforming it from a thing of beauty to a grim place of slaughter. Like a forty-year-old crime scene.

Then they talked about the VERY same thing in Sunday School. It has to mean something. But what? Why would God go to all the trouble to instruct the artists to make a thing of such beauty when He knew what would happen to it?

Hmm. One clue was brought out both at Bible study and Sunday school. God sees sin as a grim thing. And He had to find a way to teach us how He felt about sin. The picture of blood was a way to do that. As sad and hard as it is to slaughter the best of your herd in sacrifices, God considered the act of reconciling us to Himself to be more important than the life of good sheep, goats and bulls. Not that He didn't value that life. But given the choice of allowing bulls to live and keeping us out of hell, He chose our eternal souls. We had to know the awfulness of sin. And that blood-spattered altar, and the continuous sacrifice of burning flesh going on outside on the brass altar, with its own blood-spatters and the stench of the whole place of slaughter, gave us a picture of the awfulness of sin to Him.

Maybe the beauty of the Ark of the Covenant showed how we were meant to be. And maybe the blood helps us to see the defacement that sin wreaks upon us. And so this whole picture of a travelling slaughter house that went with the Isrealites wherever they went. They were followed around by a giant object lesson of what a grim mess their lives were.

You know, when I was a kid I remember reading a piece of fiction (?) in which a dog killed a chicken. And in order to keep it from becoming a chicken killer, they tied the chicken to his collar in such a way that he could not remove it. The chicken rotted on the back of his neck, and nobody could stand to go near him, and eventually even the dog himself couldn't stand the stench of that defilement back there. After a couple of weeks of misery, the dog never touched a chicken again as long as he lived.

In a way, the dog has a better memory than we do. My sin caused the slaughter of the living Christ. Did you see the Passion of the Christ? Afterwards, I felt I could never sin again, knowing what my sin caused. So how long did that last? Not long, I can tell you. But Christ chose to buy us with His precious, grim sacrifice anyway, and still the Holy Spirit chooses to tabernacle with us, even when we defile the temple (our selves) with our sin. God is most generous with us.