Pulling My Spiritual Weeds

Ambitious as I was this morning, the weather quickly hampered my intents to weed my garden, plot out the fall vegetables, and coerce my son into mowing the lawn.  The steady onslaught of rain redirected us to some much needed prayer and play time.  The Lord said, "pull some of your spiritual weeds, daughter, the others can wait."

I am so blessed to share these days with my mother, a beacon of light to me during so many of the storms of my life - not as the steady light of a flashlight shining to make clear and definite my path, pointed in the direction I should like to go, but as the light of a lighthouse that fades into and out of view, so focused and concentrated that its light guides me through the most perilous storms to safe harbor.  But in my heart I know she is not that light, Jesus is.  Rather, she is the lens so perfectly designed, composed of multiple panes (pains) of glass fashioned from her own fiery fabrication, meant to strengthen His light and be illumination to other wayward children.

After a particularly wonderful prayer time, mom opened the Bible, as she often does giving the Lord His own voice, to Isaiah 26.  We've been discussing of late (and I'd love to have you all add to this discussion) whether the kingdom of God began physically and spiritually with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 or just spiritually, with the physical yet to manifest after the time of the Gentiles (Luke 21:24) be fulfilled.  Both make sense to me.  I think that we think in time linearly - beginning here, ever marching forward to the end, when I think it is more like a graph with all points culminating at zero - absolute zero as my sister Leanne puts it, with Christ being that point - the beginning and the end.  Well, I can't even grasp that; my mind gets too bogged down.  But I would like to hear your views. 

I Wonder Where the Flowers Is....

My sisters will probably remember the following poem as well as I, having repeatedly scrawled it on binder covers or dividers, scribbling the margin with detailed flowers in various stages of bloom:

Spring is sprung
The grass is ris
I wonder where the flowers is

I'm thinking maybe its prominence on binder covers was designed to aggravate our English teachers.  Well, summer is now thick and I find my flowers wilting in the heat - magnificent blooms now drooping their weary heads, saying, "how long, O Lord [till cooler weather]?"

Like those flowers, my weary head droops at times and I ask the same darn question, "how long, O Lord [till I see you face to face]?"  I get weary of the daily struggles, the routine, the trials that come to strengthen me, and, yes, the absence of my babies, now very grown, and their babies.  Life can be heartbreaking when you make yourself vulnerable to love.

My savior knows my sorrow, as He must have asked, "how long, O man, until you realize I come to save, not condemn."  To the unbeliever, it appears the opposite, seeing instead a religion of laws to be adhered to.  Actually, the law was given to show us who we are apart from God, period.  Believers AND unbelievers don't live in a perfect little world and lawlessness is evidenced, or confirmed within us, with or without the law.  Our reaction to life's trials and love's hurts manifests that our hearts are continually wicked, ultimately serving to advance our own desires, protect our own self-interests.  Mothers Against Drunk Drivers will affirm that actions necessitate laws to bring about restraint, but whether the law is there or not, the action kills!  If you think I'm wrong, just give yourself a few more years.... Just when you think you have perfected love apart from God, you have opportunity to hate.  The law was given to demonstrate that fact!  The world counsels us:  Face Reality!  Thus too the law teaches us:  Face Reality -  I can't love perfectly, I can't always esteem another higher than myself, I can't NOT covet, I can't be God.  I love what my sister always says, "given the strength, a baby would kill for his bottle!" What looks so perfectly innocent and cherubic, would cold-cock me to satisfy his appetite!  That is my nature apart from God, with or without the law that manifests it.

The law declares us guilty.  Confirms our separation from our God. That's all. 

I feel very sorry for you if you remain as such because there is an alternative.  True religion and I'm not talking about the jeans brand.  God himself took on my sentence and gave me a new nature. 

In a nutshell: 
Romans 7:5
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
1 Corinthians 15:56
The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
Romans 8:2
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Galatians 3:24
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
Galatians 3:25
But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

No Ordinary Day

Some days you just wake up thankful to see those you love wake up.  Today my heart aches for the parents and families of two local girls injured (one fatally) in a car accident on their next to last day of school and I think how precious life is; how we need to always remember to say, "I love you."  And how precious our time is together.  In the eternal sense, God tells us to always be prepared.  "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2).   Whether one moment or 80 years is our lifespan, we are in Christ eternal. 

One morning I lingered sipping my coffee at the kitchen table, rolling my thoughts around in my head as I let caffeine stimulate my body to wake up.  Feeling somewhat lonely, wondering if my thoughts were the musings of a simpleton and not inspirations from God, I looked up over my cup to this:

Like a wink of approval, I felt one of those hugs from God, the push that motivated me to move.   This little mutilated candle holder is so like us: broken in the trenches of life, headless, handless, but still standing; a reminder to renew our minds daily and bear fruit fitting to the body of Christ.  Belonging to my daughter, we just couldn't trash this poor little broken man.  Instead he plays a prominent part in our lives; his head changes often, from flowers to fruit, and here a nut (this most peculiarly like me!).  The surprising changes always delight us when our days may seem ordinary. 

And the surprising changes that may come to our days - like kissing someone you love goodbye for perhaps the last time - reminds us to never consider the day ordinary.