I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I have set the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
Psalm 16:7-8
I love how even though I can’t make sense of my life sometimes, God has it taken care of. It’s hard for me to put my life in someone else’s hands, but when I do, he blesses that, and strengthens me. But best of all, he is free to do his will in my life. My greatest fear is to let my humanity get in the way of God’s divinity. I don’t want my flaws to hinder his plans. It’s a constant act of checking myself, examining the things I do, and surrendering, moment by moment. I know I will never achieve perfection in this area, but I hope that I am getting closer to living my life as God would have it, not as I desire.
i’ve been on this crazy journey for the past few months. i couldn’t ever describe it all, it would take days. God’s been teaching me so much about life, love, myself, people around me, and Himself. I just started reading “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren last week, and so far, this book has summarized and highlighted the very things that I have been growing in and learning about. Talk about timing. It’s as if God is solidifying those truths within me to propel me into the next leg of the journey. There are a few quotes and verses that have particularely summarized and highlighted specific points in this “journey” or whatever it should be called. For almost all of these quotes/verses, I could name a journal entry on that specific subject. thats crazy.
“When you fully comprehend that there is more to life than just here and now, and you realize that life is just preparation for eternity, you will begin to live differently. You will start living in the light of eternity, and that will colour how you handle every relationship, task, and circumstance.”
“Every day is an important day, and every second is a growth opportunity to deepen your character, to demonstrate love, or to depend on God.”
“So we fix our eyes no on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18
“What is the glory of God? It is who God is. It is the essence of his nature, the weight of his importance, the radiance of his splendor, the demonstration of his power, and the atmosphere of his presence.”
“Obedience unlocks understanding.”
“The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because he made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be…It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” CS Lewis
“Victory comes through surrender”
“Great opportunities may come once in a lifetime, but small opportunities surround us every day.”
“Real worship happens when your spirit repsonds to God, not to some musical tone.”
“Never doubt in the dark what God told you in the light.” V. Raymond Edman
“Love concentrates so intently on another that you forget yourself at that moment.”
“Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves.”
–Saint Teresa de Avila
“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”*
My life is held together by the strings of God’s grace. Only in Him is my life complete. He is the One I praise when all is as it should be, and the One I rely on when if feels like my world is falling out from underneath me. In Him I find fulfillness. He is faithful, even when I am not. He knows the deepest places of my heart and understands me better than even myself. And he is continually romancing me, unveiling secrets of his own heart: wisdom and knowledge and understanding. In his blood I find certainty when everything in my life is uncertain. When I fall, though it be often, I will rise again. “In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”** Without Him, I am nothing. In Him, I have found life, worth everything.
*Colossians 1:17
**Ephesians 1:7-8
following
Originally uploaded by mainstream.revolution.
For you have delivered me from death
and my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before God
in the light of life.
Psalm 56:13
1 Kings 19:11-13
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Every time I read this verse, something new is revealed. This time, it spoke to me about positioning myself. When God told Elijah to stand on the mountain, he did. He was positioned and prepared for God’s presence. We can experience the presence of God so many places, and many times His presence is surrounding us and we are either oblivious or we just ignore it. But when we are prepared, then God can speak and impart things to us, as he did with Elijah. Things really happen in that place, in the presence of God.
Also with regard to this verse, I love how God speaks in a whisper. So personal, so intimate. It’s like God wants to be so close to us, and us so close to Him that he can just whisper, and we will hear him. I get a picture of a dad lying on the bed with his son or daughter, and them listening intently while he imparts wisdom and speaks destiny into them. So beautiful, and humbling.
The sky is so mysterious. It’s like a wall above us that we can’t get away from. We can try and penetrate it by flying planes and spaceships further and further into it, and yet it’s still there, beckoning us with it’s endlessness. It’s so empty, yet at the same time, so full. I was looking into the cloudless sky this afternoon and it was just a sea of blue, going on forever. At the same time, it looks like there’s nothing there, but still so full of blue. And this, this is the paradox of the sky.
I can’t help but wonder why we have paradoxes. Is it supposed to lead us to think deeper about things? Some religions believe that when you have a moment wehre you discover the answer to a paradox of life you gain enlightenment. So are these profound mysteries intended us to lead us closer to God? We will never know their true intent, but if you take it deep enough, I’m sure it could lead you to a revelation of God. God is so huge and so infinite, in one dimension, yet also so loving and intimate. That is a paradox right there. Maybe, just maybe, paradoxes are there to help us better understand the God we serve, to understand the ultimate divine paradox.
I think paradoxes are also meant to help us understand the complexities of life itself. So how does this mystery of the sky relate to life? Well, when you just glance at the sky, particularly the night sky, it seems pretty empty. Not much going on, it’s just there. However, when you wait longer and look closely, little flecks of light begin to appear all over the sky. And of course there’s the moon, the heart of the matter.
This might not apply to everyone’s view of their world, but for me, when I generally look at my life, I don’t notice anything significant. I know my life has meaning, but it’s not too out of the ordinary. But as I continue to go through life, I have moments, each one seperate and significant in their own way, but when you look at them together, they tell a beautiful story that is my life, much like the stars, each in a way isolated, but together they create a beautiful masterpiece in the night sky. I think if people looked at their lives that way, as a masterpiece, then maybe they would appreciate themselves and their lives more. It’s so important to place value on even the seemingly insignificant moments we find ourselves in. They are chapters in our story, stars in our sky. Life is such a marvelous gift and it should be valued at much more that it is in the minds of people today.
I had a conversation with a good friend just over a week ago. I had mentioned that sometimes I wish I had a boyfriend, he asked why, and I said because I feel I’m missing out on certain things. I didn’t mean things like kissing, holding hands, things like that. I feel like I’m missing out on love, on that mysterious love that can only be found between a man and a woman. I’ve experienced the true, unconditional love given freely by God, my Father. But the human replication of that love is still unknown to me. I’ve experienced one-sided infatuation, and even mutual interest, but not love. It’s love that I am most longing for, but also what I am most afraid of. I think it is simply just a fear of the unknown. All I have known of that kind of love is what has been portrayed to me through media, my friends, and my family. And in many cases, it is a selfish, superficial love, which is not what I am looking for, nor what I am willing to give. I could never take the chance of losing love to find romance. And since I have not yet found love, I don’t want to take the risk of romance in order to find tainted love.
But what is love, anyway? Is it the upside-down stomach when you think of that one, special person? Is it a feeling or emotion? Is it the pounding of your heart when you look into eyes that hold the answer to your questions? Is it just a word you write to explain how much something means to you? Or can it be something more meaningful and much deeper than that? I believe it is, or can be. I worry though, that I’m not deep enough to love someone that way. I guess love is built on trust, so when you grow to trust someone, love develops as a result of that. But can love also be two people who have there own seperate personalities, interests, strengths and weaknesses, and when those two people come together in a relationship, they complete each other? I want to find such love. Love that doesn’t care about what the other person looks like now, but cares about still being “in love” after many years of being together. In talking with another good friend about this, she said that I may feel as though I’ve been missing out on love, but really, I have that much more love to give to the right man.
I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close. –Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
by Robert Frost
How many people see the beauty of God’s creation every day, yet don’t even realize that it’s Him? Especially in the city, with pressures of society and city lights that blind us from the true beauty around us, we forget that God creatively paints every moment, ever shape, every colour of the huge prairie sky that I often don’t apprectiate. The sky tells the story of eternity. It beckons us closer to something supernatural, something spiritual. But we’re too busy looking down at our problems and issues that we think are important. If all of those things that make us feel as though we have fulfilled lives, if they were all taken away, what would we be left with? The sky, the mountains. Each other. God. Those are the things we should be concerning ourselves with.
This past week, I was driving on highway 1 through the mountains on my way home to Calgary. We just happened to be passing through a lush mountain valley right about the time when the sun begins to at times, be hidden behind the mountains, and in some places illuminating the valley below it. When we were at such a point in the road, the sun shone across the valeey, turning it from an evening green to a rich golden display. At that moment, I had nothing clouding my mind, no worries or preoccupations. All I was thinking about was the road below me and this awesome display of beauty. I couldn’t get over how beautiful the valley was right in that moment.
I believe that nature, in all it’s glory, gives us a glimpse of the majesty of God. If this moment in time in the BC rockies was just a glimpse of God’s beauty, I can’t even comprehend the full glory of who He is. I’m filled with such an awe when I think that a God who is constantly creating moments of beauty, each one a reflection of His own, has a plan just as beautiful and promising for my life. Just thinking of that prompts me to surrender all to my God, who is above the wanderings of my mind, above the worries of my heart.
Any time I get caught up in the meaningless things around me, all I need to do is look up at the sky. Always there, yet constantly being moulded into a new creation. What an amazing God!
