HEART'S CRY

I've been thinking about why it is so difficult for me to let go.  Holding on is so stressful and exhausting.  Holding on to my own self justification, selfish ambition and self promotion separates me from the freedom of letting go.  Separates me from my relationship with God and my relationships with others.  This reminded me of the verse..."You want something but don't get it.  You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.  You quarrel and fight.  You do not have, because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."   James 2:2-3 God help me to let go of wanting my own way!

What's in a Choice?  Once on my way to do chores I had the choice of going over the barb wire fence or around the long way.  Still trying to decide, I put my leg over the wire and then hesitated.  Hesitated just long enough to embed a barb in the seat of my jeans.  Not able to go one way or another until finally I pulled away tearing my jeans and a little flesh.  Learning my lesson that I have to choose. Choice.  The ability to choose one option or another. "The act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities."  Making a decision.  Choosing one way or the other.   We have many choices to make.  The choice to obey.  The choice to love or not love.  The choice to serve or not serve.  The choice to fail.  Choice to take a risk and make a stand.  Choice to believe.  Choice to follow or to lead.  Choice to speak.  Choice to work. Choice to think.  Choice ...

I was out in my back yard tinkering this morning when I watched more needles fall from my beautiful pine tree.  So I just watched.  I think we can learn a lot about God and ourselves by standing in and observing nature.   Half of the needles are brown and it is as if the tree shakes randomly shakes them off for me to gather up and use for compost.  Kind of like itchy skin! I looked up to see how often the evergreen sheds needles and amazingly, it is an ongoing process.  The evergreen constantly sheds needles throughout it's life. It is in a constant renewal.  This allows it to manage it's energy not have to go dormant to conserve. The tree can still take in food, sun, oxygen and still produce and grow new leaves in a more constant rate.  Not the influx in the spring and then asleep like my cotton trees.  Makes it strong and resistant and able to handle the cold and drought. My pine tree is constantly taking off the old and putting on...

  I heard a new word yesterday which left me intrigued and curious. Gradualism.   This person put it in simple form of a child asking for something.  We say,  "just one," and then another one and pretty soon it's gone.  Or, we'll see until we say yes. I thought of the frog in boiling water.  If you put a frog in a pan of room temperature water and gradually turn up the heat, it will stay and boil to death.  If you drop it in a pot of boiling water- it will jump out. An advertising guru by the name of Gene Schwartz coined the term as a way to structure or architect belief.  An inconspicuous way to build whatever belief you want someone to have.  He says that it has nothing to do with facts, proof or reason.  Is this the same as building bridges?  Linkages?  Systems theory?  Grooming? Conformity? The slow numbing or our ability to critical think and question?  The apathy and sleep at the wheel syndrome that...

Sitting beneath the tree in the beautiful fall evening, I breath deep of the cool air as quietly as I can.  Almost afraid to mess up the stillness.  The dying leaves are barely hanging on the tree and the squirrels have finally curled up in their nest.  Stillness surrounds me. Like a child spinning in circles, arms wide out until crashing with dizziness. The movement stops but the spinning continues within.  Life seems like that.  Rushing.  Spinning. Hurrying.  I stop.  Waiting for the movement to end.  Then it is as if God reaches out with His still small voice and touches the center of my spinning heart and mind and I become still. "Be Still and Know that I am God."    The word in Hebrew is "to let go."  "To drop."  To relax, surrender, to stop.  To Be Still and truly Know that God is God and He is in charge.  To let go.  Stillness that comes not from ourselves but from Him who has the power to still th...

Breathing.  What an amazing gift.   So basic and primordial.   An instinct, a reflex, a decision and a practice.   Y et it happens without our awareness. Breathing.  Breathing without thought or effort.  Breathing deliberately and strategically.  Lord thank you for breath!  Thank you for breathing life into us.  Breathing your Word into existence.  Breathing life into our spirits and our minds.  The best things in life are nearest:  Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.  Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

All I know about this function on my computer is that when I defragment-my computer works better!!!  Since I am so technologically astute apt, I think this means that everything in the computer is jumbled.   Dictionary to the rescue.  Fragment suggest that breakage has happened.  The whole broken into parts.  An isolated and incomplete part of something.  Defragment according to the dictionary used another very cool word that I had to look up as well.  Concatenate.  To link things together in a chain or series. I n an age of self-actualization, of the human potential movement and dancing with the stars (or the energy of one) and so many seeking to become their own god with their own truth- we need some clean up! I think we need a good dose of defragmenting that only Jesus- can work in our lives.  Alligning ourselves to the truth of God's Word.  Compressing that space between reality and deception that weakens and slows us down...

Letting Go.  The first thing I do when I get home is drop all of my bags on the couch with a thump.   I usually do not hold on to the trash that I am "letting go" of in the trash can.  Letting go of the laundry that I drop in the machine is easy.  Why is letting go of the trash, dirt and baggage in my own life so hard to let go?  Why is it so easy to carry bags of worry and the expectations of others.  To tote around the desire to please someone else and all of the to do's to make that happen is exhausting. Lord, I'm picking up only what you have asked me to carry today and let go of all of the rest for you to take on.  Thank you!!

A simple day for simple pleasures friends.  Life is simple.  We make it complicated.   Feel the breeze and the sun on this gorgeous fall day.  Crunch some leaves, sing a song, wave at your neighbors and smile.  Enjoy the feel of that hug and kiss.  Play and laugh.  Scream at the top of your lungs for no reason at all.  Breathe deep.   Listen.  Listen to the sounds that we seldom hear.  Listen to the still small voice of the ONE who  loves you most.  Listen to the squirrel chewing out the bird in the tree and the sounds of the wind through the trees and the chimes.  Listen to the swings squeaking in the park and the sound of a sprinkler and the birds. Think.  Think grateful, thankful and peaceful thoughts.  Think courageous and still and sound things. Be.  Just be for today.  Be with HIM.  Be with your family.  Be at work.  Be with whomever you are with.  No hidden ...

Such a beautiful fall night and I'm feeling very nostalgic.  So thinking about my one room education in Hereford, SD where I started school with Mrs. Eppenbaugh.  She had also taught my Grandmother Lois. Mrs. Eppenbaugh brought a black lunch box every day with the apple and the paring knife.  At lunch, while we ate, she would cut the apple and read to us from the classics. Beside the front door to the school was an old bell that was the same one that my Grandma and her siblings rang.  Nearby was the flag pole that was the center of the opening and closing activities.  On nice days we would all go and say the Pledge of Allegiance as the flag went up.  The care and folding of the flag was an assigned chore each day where we carefully folded and put the flag up. The front porch doubled as the goalie for cold day soccer or dodge ball or protection from the boys' snowballs and a way to be outside on the worst wintery days.  Beside and behind the schoo...

Fighting disease and building immunity.  This time of year people make plans to get their flu shots on board as "the cold" creeps into our community.  Inoculation is the placement of something that will grow and reproduce to promote and increase immunity to a specific disease.   We are given a weakened version of the real thing.  For example, the flu.  This year's flu shot will include the regular flu and the H1N1 flu.  The flu can cause us to feel drained and depleted and for some is very dangerous.  And yet is it better to depend on natural exposure or go for the shots? What does the spiritual flu feel like?  Do we feel drained and without purpose and direction.  Does spiritual inoculation prevent this disease in our lives?  Do bits and pieces and sound bytes of God's Word inoculate us from the spiritual flu and increase our immunity?  Does a weakened portion of the real thing substitute for the depth and living Word? ...

Driving home from my son's football game tonight on the Interstate.  So much traffic on that road!  I was driving and trucks were bunching up so I blinked my light to let a truck know that he could pass.  When I went by, he flashed his lights in response.  Made me smile.  What a wonderfully small and yet gracious act on a very dark road.    Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow GOD'S WORD In the same way let your light shine in front of people. Then they will see the good that you do and praise your Father in heaven.