[Preface note: My “one word” for 2014 is “aware.” And the first thing I want to grow more aware of is God’s presence in my everyday…]

I was all alone in the house. And it was late and dark and freakishly cold, and the wind was howling wild around the house corners and making moan and clank and bump and bang, and the chill so bad the weather bureau was sounding dire warnings about any time out in it being life threatening.

And when I placed the skillet on the gas burner and turned the knob, the sound was odd and a little pop came, so I flicked it off and tried again…

Then the yellow flame all around,

and then the LOUD “POP!”

and all the lights blanked out but those dim beams on the opposite end of the kitchen, on a different breaker.

Needless to say, I turned the knob to “off” and left it there. A little rattled, a little timid, I fished the “miscellaneous drawer” for a flashlight and headed to the basement stairs to find the tripped breaker and click it back on.

But was everything okay in the kitchen now?

I went back and investigated. I sniffed around and smelled no gas fumes (though I did detect a funny burnt-plastic odor.) I lifted parts from the burner and saw all the black.

What had caused this I couldn’t guess. All I could do was keep thanking God it had ended where it had.

If the house had caught fire…

if I’d had to get out, and get to a neighbor’s…

could I have grabbed enough body and head and hand coverage on the way?

could I have made it to any neighbor on foot in less than fifteen minutes in this wind and blowing snow? (Our houses aren’t close.)

(And, now in further retrospect I wonder: would I have thought to snatch the keys from their hook and go pull open the garage door and see if the car would even start… because even in my right-after-the-fact thinking, this never occurred to me.  So it’s likely I’d have run out the door without them.)

And would any neighbors have heard me pounding on their door, or would they think it was more wind antics?

The intervening hand of God? Who can say that definitely? The breaker blowing may have resulted from some built-in safety feature… I don’t know. I don’t even know why the whole thing happened. Nor does the husband I was doubly glad to see come shuddering, hunched up through the back door later.)

But this I do know. There have been closer calls and nearer misses for both of us. From childhood right up to our recent years. (I could write a series on them.) Amazing uncanny deliverances.

So I choose to class this among them.

And to consider how the adventure of last night heightened my awareness of this other thing I know:

God is with me. Sometimes, like Sunday, His presence is evident in the palpable stillness and uncanny “coincidences.” Most of the time not so clearly. But always there, always with me, wherever I might be, in whatever state.

And I must still be here on earth for some reason, I think, as I review all the close brushes with death.

He has made me… aware.

When, before Him, we prayerfully choose a theme word for a year (or it “chooses” us?), He takes us up on it. And  no matter what the word, He usually has His ways of making us repeatedly aware of it!

Did you pick a “One Word” for 2014?

*****

10 AM, Sunday.

The stillness, the silence, it’s palpable. Greatest silence I can remember in this place.

Solitude makes an intrinsic component. And clear all-blue sky. And absence of breeze out there, whitened pine boughs moving not even a quiver. Blue-shadowed snow stands trackless and smoothed by past wind drifts. Even the sparkles sprinkled over its sculptings stand still in the light. Traffic has been nearly nil. The roads are ice-blotched, the air deep frozen. Humankind must all be curled under covers inside walls, or hunched under shawls or sweaters, silently sipping hot mugs.

But there is more to this hush than that. I’m sure.

It is mesmerizing.  And I am so blessed.

I have done little, very little, so as to gather the stillness into my arms, into my soul. If only it can stretch out longer. Maybe it can?…

I’ll write no more right now. For that itself is a sort of talk, of non-silence.

To savor: Silence till “Sext”—well, according to daylight savings time, at least.

1 PM

He’s back from the prison, where he fill-in preached at the Protestant inmates’ service. We’ve both already stilled all the way into a before-dinner nap. Now we sit at table, watching steam rise from comfort of pot roast with carrots, potatoes… plain winter warm food. And between the clicking of the forks I ask him, how he might have been aware of the working of God in the morning.

(For “aware” seems to be emerging as my “one word” for this year.)

And immediately he says, The responsiveness. The silence.

Even the CO’s (correctional officers) in the back of the room and those back-seat-takers usually chatting amid the sermon, all were “quiet as a mouse,” he said. Stiller than ever.

He had time for a sort of very personal invitation at the end of his talk, for individual hearts to relate with God alone, him not even looking up for any hands or nods—or tears. But he knew somehow that things were happening… because of the depth of silence… and because he’d been standing there praying for God’s moving, if only in one human heart.

Which matched exactly what I’d been moved to pray back at home!

So still here. So still way up there. Prayer in sync, without our knowing…

A true Holy Hush it surely must have been—which can come only from God Himself.

So thankful I am that we ourselves were still enough to hear it, feel it.

Truly, God’s Spirit moves in silence. Truly, His universe-big voice, in speaking to us, is still and small. Our part is but to still ourselves and listen.

***

“The LORD was not in the wind; … the LORD was not in the earthquake; … the LORD was not in the fire; …[but] after the fire a still small voice …” -1 Kings 19:11-13

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“People really do go around in circles when lost, in woods or deserts, at least under cloudy skies [obscuring reference points], although no one’s been able to figure out why.

“When lost in the woods, or deserts, or mountains and valleys of life, the wisest thing to do is stop right where you are and be still. Send up signals for rescue and wait to be found.”

[From  the last post.]

He sees. He knows. He reaches down with love and and grace and gives us the reference point we need: Himself.

After wandering the forest of a week, what blessing in the stilling, in seeing the Reference Point re-emerge more clearly into view!

A blessed weekend to all who read.

~

“Be still, and know that I am God…” (Ps 46:10)

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God gave me a special gift this past December: three weeks of illness! A gift? Yes, because most of the time I still could read and think, and could go through another pile of gifts: past journals—in the most extensive diary search and seizure I’d ever done.

In three entries of last December’s journal, I wrote about it (as shared below). I highly recommend it to all other journal-ers…

12/10/2013

… heard Dr. David Jeremiah encouraging journaling as a spiritual discipline—especially journaling the working of God in your days. His role model for this was his never-married eccentric uncle, who visited sometimes for a stretch of days. At the dinner table he’d ask if anyone knew what had happened on “this date” for the previous seven years.

Jeremiah spoke much on journaling’s value [for] 1) remembering what God has done, 2) connecting with Him more intimately, 3) getting real with God—it’s hard to be phony for long in a private personal journal…

12/11/2013

I think to do what the eccentric uncle talked about: …see what was going on in and around me, on and around today’s date for the past seven years.

I look first at 2009 because I’ve been reading that, and what I see there in myself is abhorrent to me right now, especially after focusing this morning on the actual commands of Romans 12-15—and the lack of [my following] them [evidenced] in certain passages… I am shamefaced with embarrassment, repent “in dust and ashes,” and only leave the odious… pages in the journal to stay honest and see in present and future review the repulsive mindset they exhibit. It’s a vain and self-focused mindset and a kind of disgusting pride. Ugh! God forgive me and cleanse me!

Doing more foraging in old journals around this day of this month [previous years] I am chagrined to see myself wringing my hands over the same uncertainties… It’s pathetic! And it has to end. I am determined not to continue in this same doing of something while I have no certainty that it’s God’s will for me.

I felt so disgusted with myself and this pathetic rerun-after-rerun, I decided I’d better try to find something in which I’d grown over those years. Searching now, remembering a few things, too…

12/15/2013

People really do go around in circles when lost, in woods or deserts, at least under cloudy skies, although no one’s been able to figure out why.

I’ve deeply grieved that my last 7 years’ journals show me doing the same thing in life—going in the same circles yearly—for 7 years (or more)! I had no idea I’d repeated my folly so long!

When lost in the woods, or deserts, or mountains and valleys of life, the wisest thing to do is stop right where you are and be still. Send up signals for rescue and wait to be found. Do what you can right where you are, as wisely as possible. Don’t try to head out, even if you think you know which way to go…

[Also] I’ve repeated so many mistakes and feel so discouraged to discover this… that I really need to note anything I’ve done that was not a mistake, especially if it was a new tactic/practice. At first I felt I wouldn’t find any, but I did…

[And for the next full page I list them:]

“It was not a mistake to…”

[Later I find more…]

Just a few values of journaling. And of reading and considering the journaling you’ve done in the past!

*****

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I hated to see it go. I thought of it as kind of historic, that old outhouse which had become a shed long before our time here. 

But he said it had to go. It just wasn’t worth trying to fix up. The  the siding was shot, the roof crumbling, and the poor thing listed a bit to the right. 

A little paint wasn’t going to help this sad relic.

So he set to it.

And his words proved even truer  than he knew—once he got beneath the surface…

I took some photos when he started in.  First he peeled off crumbling roof tiles. Bit by bit.

Then the siding, piece by piece.

This was going to take a while, I thought. So I didn’t hang around long by the window. 

I had other things to do, I could check back later…

When I did…

It was gone!

“How did it go down so fast?” I asked.

Seems it had no bona fide framework! Just two rectangles of two-by-fours, at base and top, with everything else just stuck on. All he had to do was hook up the tractor and pull. Down it went like a collapsing cardboard box—because it wasn’t much more than that!

The wonder is that it stood there all those years. No foundation. No upright studs. Just a couple little flimsy outlines of existence.

Kinda like the faith life of some of us. Held together by the grace of God alone.

We need a foundation. Dug deep is best. Most of us know that. (Luke 6:47-49)

But we also need some practical structure to our spiritual lives, fastened tight to that foundation…

My last post spoke of our need to let God be God in our lives and do the transforming work on our souls that only He can do. But that doesn’t mean pray a flippant, “Jesus, it’s all Yours,” and then folderol our way through our days, years, and lives—flying off with every wind of whim, impression, or earthy trend that happens to blow by.

We need to allow Him to work, not only by taking our hands off what’s His job alone, but also by “preparing the way” for Him to do it. 

Which brings me to the dirty word I was thinking of adopting as this year’s theme word:

Discipline.

Wait, stop! Don’t click off! This is important!

It’s not everything. Not what should take the place of God’s work. But it is essential to Him having room to do that work. 

For example, His holy Spirit settles His word into our hearts, illumines it, brings it to pulsing life. But only if we take the time to read or listen to that word, take it in so He has something there to illumine and enliven. He works through prayer—but only if we take the time and effort to pray supplications, give thanks and praise, fellowship with Him, and intercede for others! And the same is true in many areas. Thus the value of allotting times, adequate times, for things like Bible reading and reflection on it, and prayer in all its multi-dimensions. 

For me, my big spiritual need and desire right now is increasing discernment. Discernment of His presence with me, of what pleases Him and keeps me in sync with Him, connected, empowered, and guided—of what hinders or alienates me from that kind of ongoing relationship, of the difference between the good and the best, most eternally blest.

So, in a coming post,  “A Framework for Spiritual Discernment.”

Meanwhile, may God bless you with a well-built new year!

*****

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