We look in the wrong direction. At the earth. Horizontal.

We notice people God has filled with His Spirit and His blessings, and make them our “inspiration” — because they do set us great examples, and through them we can see what God can do in a life.

Then, too often, we go from horizontal to down — feeling incapable of lives so filled.

Yet all real inspiration comes ultimately from God, and begins with Who He is…

We look at gifts He gives us, and work to build gratitude.

Which is good and right, but difficult in flesh alone.

Again, we need to lift our eyes and heart: to the source from which all those good gifts come — and not just thank Him for the gifts, but praise Him for all He, the Source, is. In and of Himself. Period.

That’s when grace and glory and gladness stir inside, and rise and grow, and soon burst forth–

an exuberant lifted-high sacrifice of praise.

…

It began with a song. This song.

She sang it at the church. She sang it in her head and heart. And she sang it back home later.

…

The song had a seed. This seed: “Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find…” (…to bless, to praise, to worship the Lord).

And the seed words received a skeptical response, in this case from a little brother:

“No one can know ten thousand reasons,” he said.

…

I give you her inner response (in green):

…

That got me thinking.

I bet there are ten thousand reasons.

I bet there are ten thousand times ten thousand reasons.

I don’t know if it’s possible for me to know them all, but if it is, I want to.

I want to find ten thousand reasons. Ten thousand reasons to bless the Lord. Ten thousand reasons to just worship God.

I wanted to go deeper than that, though.

I’ve been learning a lot lately about how God-centric the Gospel is, how He does everything for His glory.

As of last night, I’ve counted 7239 gifts, 7239 reasons to worship God. And that is a good, and wonderful, and God-honoring thing,

But…

This time I want to count reasons to worship God for who He is — For the amazing things that He has done that I am completely incapable of. For His love and His justice. For parted waters and a sun that stood still in the sky.

I don’t want to stop giving thanks for the beautiful, everyday miracles, for the endless, abundant graces.

But I do want to dig even deeper,

To count something different,

To know Him even better.

So began her own self-challenge, to count “God-centric” reasons to praise and worship Him — ten each day of Lent, adding up to 400 by Easter. They had to be verifiable by scripture, not just something she “made up” from her head.

I read about this on her blog. (And you can, too, here.) And I thought, “What a great challenge!” and decided to take it up for myself. Mine got started way later, so my numbers are way behind hers, but I found, in any counting session, I could seldom stop at ten! Once reasons got rolling, they wanted to snowball, and was that ever glorious!

My intent: to keep going beyond Lent, and see if I can eventually count 10,000 reasons…

Do you think there are that many? Want to help gather the praises together?

She added a link-up, so you can connect your counting posts. I didn’t see it right away. But I’ve been counting — not just gifts but reasons. And tomorrow I’ll be linking at Mary’s.

I hope you’ll join me, counting REASONS (you decide how many) to worship Him for all He is, with scripture references to verify. Wouldn’t it be great to see this get snowballing…!!

Link up for bloggers here.

{For readers who don’t blog, send Mary a comment listing your reasons and scripture refs.}

Let’s “make His praise glorious!”

[10,000 REASONS LINK-UP SPOT]

This post linked to

The absurdness of it all!

I laughed.

The thought of a going-blind blogger running around scavenging for photo ops and trying to produce good pictures! And spending more time trying to learn new techniques and polish skills! A little ridiculous, isn’t it?

I did all that again Saturday, just because I enjoy it. But as the day wound down, I thought how time had run through my fingers like gold coins through the prodigal’s. Hm, maybe a waste?

My blog is about aiming toward living more fully the Christian life. Any non-Christian could use up a day this way, posting photos. And with my corneal dystrophy I’m supposed to expect increasing vision loss till perhaps full blindness, and who can take and edit photos blind?!

That’s what I thought as I finished gathering photos.

I also thought, oh well, so what? It’s my “day off,” and as long as I can do this, why not enjoy it as much as possible?

I published the photo post yesterday morning, early.

And yesterday afternoon, late…

I heard those beloved footsteps on the stairway and yes, Husband came entering my little writing room — with a book in his hand, and no knowledge of my Saturday thoughts in his head.

He’s been reading Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life, by Nick Vujicic, and he just came upon a passage he “had to” share.

It’s near the end of the book: about prize-winning photographer Glennis Siverson. — legally blind prize-winning photographer.

Diagnosed with a corneal disease (specifics not given) and a forecast of impending blindness, she’d followed doctor’s advice and gotten a cornea transplant that only made things nightmarishly worse, and meanwhile developed an “unrelated” (serious) vision problem in her other eye.

Yet she refused to call this a disablement — but rather, an enablement! Before, she said, her photography was too stiff and exacting. This loosened the stiffness, and freed creativity. So she wins awards for the results — and not as some kind of handicap, but on the playing field with the rest of the best.

“Being nearly blind has made me a better photographer,” she says.

And I get it!

I also note on her website her favorite scripture verse: “We walk by faith and not by sight.” A verse I’ve thought about a lot in the last year and a half.

Well! So now I’m even considering looking for a more sophisticated camera, and a tripod, and hoping to spend more time learning lots of new skills and tricks. And I’m thanking God profusely for this inspiring example.

In reviewing Exodus this morning, I “happened upon” the passage about how God filled Bezalel with His Spirit “to design artistic works… in all manner of workmanship” (Ex 31:1-5).  And now I’m thinking that nowhere does scripture tell us how well he could see!

Is all this another set of mere “coincidences”? (Smile.)

Thanking God for these marvelous gifts:

~The limiting and gradual lessening of vision with these blessed consequences (most not mentioned before):

~~Push to greater creativity.

~~Seeing things as others don’t. (For instance, you know how photographers add sparkle and halos and edge blurs and such to photos to jazz them up? I see them naturally! ha!)

~~Sharper tuning in of hearing, and the “visions” of sounds (I’m pretty much an auditory-mode learner to start with — probably because my eyes never were too powerful.)

~~Enhanced tactile sense (I can feel whether a pan or plate in the dishwater is clean better than most people can see it. And… I always liked working with clay, and I’m thinking maybe of taking up sculpture again…)

~~Enhanced olfactory sense. (My father seemed almost part bloodhound, and I think I got some of that sharp sense of smell from him. Now it grows even more refined.)

~~Enhanced taste. (What do you do when you want to fully savor something delicious? Close your eyes, right?)

~~Huge appreciation of everything I still can see. I don’t take this for granted, and so don’t miss what many others may.

~~The inspiration from people like Nick Vujicic and Glennis Siverson and this blind quilter to live a “Ridiculously Good Life”!

How might you go about having a ridiculously blessed, good, and happy day today?

…..

Related Posts:

He Goes Before, into Vision Loss

Next Step into the Fog

“Before They Call I will Answer”

*****

Linked to

Linking up with today Ashley Sisk’s photo SCAVENGER HUNT SUNDAY 

and

(Snapshot #2 below is a scripture!)

These are the week’s prompts:

Vintage  —   Word or Quote  —  Nature’s Own  —  People  —  Photographer’s Choice 

1. Vintage

2. Word or Quote

3. Nature’s Own

4. People

5. Photographer’s Choice

Brave.

[Go?]

Today I do not want to write about a prompt. I do not want to write about “brave.”

I’ve written so much about what we call bravery already anyhow. I wrote about that kind of thing here and here, for instance. And I wouldn’t have called myself brave at  those times, because they were mostly about me being timid and trembling and trying like crazy to wiggle out of what God clearly wanted me to do.

The only act I can think of being close to brave in itself is that standoff with the porcupine. It does seem, if I recall rightly, that instinctive protectiveness did somehow kick in then and I went forth because otherwise, something very nasty was likely to happen soon to some poor, dear, dumb sheep.

Hearing about it later, a young man declared to me his wife would never have done that, and I begged to differ with him. If she had a child to protect, I think she would, in a blink. I’m not naturally brave at all, but God does build into us those brave bits for when they’re needed in an instant. 

Instinct or not, I did pray my way through that episode.  But all the other times I stood and did the “brave” right, it wasn’t instinct or bravery at all, with prayer sprinkled in, but utter dependence on Him all the way! [Stop]

Well, it looks like I wrote it after all. I set the timer and “went at it,” because not only did I not feel like writing about brave, I didn’t feel like writing at all. And exercises like this are good jumpstarts for reluctant, lazy writers! Hm, who knows, now: this wet day just might become a marathon of writing…

*****

Linked to