This is my season of over-busy, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, of relentless disruptions.

They yank me here, there, everywhere but where I most need to be. They come from outside myself, they come from within…

Last year I chose a theme word: “Closer,” voicing my desire, and intent, to draw nearer and nearer my Beloved, Lover of my Soul. As that year went on, it was happening, the greater closeness.

That word gave me such good guidance I decided to use it again this year.

Besides, I had unfinished business with it. I’d made it an acronym whose letters would remind me of things needful to gain and maintain that closeness, and L was about as far as I got—in my posts, at least.

So this year continued “C-L-O-S-E-R.”

At first, anyway.

But something horrible has happened (although only the God-hungry will consider it horrible):

Drift.

Like a boat cut from its anchor, floating all over the water, instead of tethered to the Rock where it belongs.

How did this happen? I ask, and seek, and soon I see: unpredictable interruptions repeatedly grabbing my dangling tow line and yanking my boat this way, then that, all crazy!

So I think up a Yankee-work-ethic remedy, counteracting tactics, and employ them…

Alas, it’s all fleshly doings, which more often than not become distractions themselves by pulling me out of established routines—as much disruption emanating from myself as from anything or anyone around me!

So. Back to start. And do not collect $200.

Start for me is “Call,” the “C” in my acronym C-L-O-S-E-R. And I even need to “call on” God to provide the words to call out.

I found them in my own post from just a year ago. Such help! Better than any printed documents or books, because online I can hover my cursor over references, and call after call in psalmist wording rises into view.

How many did I voice, just this morning? Lots! How long did I spend calling out to Him through them? Long!

Yes, I could have been talking at God with “my prayers,” and doing “my daily Bible reading,” but, honestly, I have been doing those things all along. And drifting. Still drifting, whether the water lies calm or its waves roll hard.

But didn’t Jesus say it? “Apart from me you can do… nothing”! My flailing around might look like something in all its exhausting effort. But in Kingdom economy, the scale registers it weightless.

And oh, the calm, at last, like that of a weaned child with its mother (Psalm 131:2)! I have what I need, and I am satisfied that He will steer my boat if it really has to go someplace new and different, and otherwise will keep it anchored in His refuge, close to Him. But I need to keep calling on Him to do it. Because the world, and my own flesh, and yes, that old enemy of the soul, all have their sneaky ways of undoing the rope of connection. They’re strong. Often stronger than my best intentions and efforts. But His strength is greater, greater than all.

Maybe you also need to go back to the beginning, to the source of all good that happens in us, back to Step One, “Call!” So, republished below is the post that helped me (enhanced since its original posting). Two posts in one today.

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Closer without the C is…? (How Not to Lose Out)

“To form a habit of conversing with God continually, and referring all we do to Him, we must first apply to Him with some diligence…”

-Brother Lawrence, in The Practice of the Presence of God

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CLOSER: The ”One Word” I chose as my year’s goal, to draw and stay closer to God my Savior, Christ my Lord.

C-L-O-S-E-R: The letters as an acronym, or acrostic, each letter standing for a guide word, a help to drawing near.

 

Call: Good guide word for C to stand for.

And lately glimpsing C-L-O-S-E-R without its first letter, I saw what comes of leaving out the “call.”

 

C-L-O-S-E-R without the C is… LOSER. And that’s what I will be! Losing so much blessing.

Call.

Call to Him.

Call out to Him.

Or quietly call on Him in gentle, trusting approach.

But call. on. Him.

We all need to.

Because we all need His power to work in us.

We are weak. And we need to know we’re weak, need to admit it humbly before Him.

Blessed are the poverty-stricken in spirit.

Blessed are the destitute of soul, the beggars of God’s grace.

We do not know how to draw near.

We do not even know how to pray.

Sometimes we don’t even know how to begin by calling.

But His Spirit helps us in this weakness, too. His word helps us voice our heart, gives us His words to put in our mouths. So we can pray a call totally according to His word, His will, His Spirit — thus, a confidant call!

How to call upon the LORD?

Look at all the calls He gives us! (Below: Not an exhaustive list!) We can use any of these scriptures as openings to prayer, or interspersed within it, as we feel need, even as we feel our souls recede and start to stray. We need His power to help us keep clinging close as well as initially to draw near.

Notice how different some of the cries are and what they call for, how they express such varied needs, at various times of the day, or night.

(Hover your cursor and the scripture passage will appear in the NKJV. To read it in a different version, click on the reference and it will appear in its context at BlueLetterBible.org. Scroll to the top of the page there and click “Change version,” and then your choice. Or use your favorite Bible, opened to Psalms.)

Psalm 4:1

Ps 5:1-3

Ps 6:1-4

Ps 12:1

Ps 16:1-2

Ps 17:1,6

Ps 25:1-2,4,5

Ps 26:1-2

Ps 28:1-2

Ps 31:1-3

Ps 38:1,4,15-16,21-22

Ps 39:4,7,12

Ps 43:1,3

Ps 51:1-2

Ps 54:1-2

Ps 55:1-2

Ps 57:1-2

Ps 61:1-2

Ps 62:1 (A silent, waiting call)

Ps  63:1-2

Ps  64:1

Ps 69:1-3,16-18

Ps 70:1

Ps 71:1-5

Ps 80:1,17-19

Ps 86:1,6-7

Ps 88:1-2

Ps 102:1-2 (See Ps 102:17-20)

Ps 116:1-2

Psalm 119 is loaded with calls, scattered throughout.

Ps 120:1-2

Ps 121:1-2

Ps 123:1-3

Ps 130:1-2

Ps 141:1-4

Ps 142:1-2

Ps 143:1

(Feel free to copy the list for your own use.)

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Still Saturday

(With apologies! I forgot S S posts were to be few in words! But since the above so helped me settle into soul stillness, may it do likewise anyway for someone else.)

 

Just five short minutes of free-writing on the prompt word “imagine,” for Five Minute Friday…

Imagine! The very word sends me all over the place. I think I’ve always been a great imaginer, perhaps way too much in the past, perhaps way too little in the present.

Right now I’m imagining a very early tea party in the front porch shadows before the day begins to steam and stew and heat waves make mirages over blacktop…

The flowers, all prearranged in the bush at the front, a display all wild with joy and deep rose-red. The tray is set, there’s specialty cheese and good French bread, so thin cut, and slices of pears. What about sweets? What is there for that in my now imagination, with the ovens broken and beyond repair till the right part arrives at the supply place…

But that brings imagination down into the dust. Cinnamon sugar on toast will do.  Or frozen strawberries to dip in the chocolate sauce left in the fridge (better).

And it is quiet.

That part, it might not happen. But all the rest can. Right now.

That is the best kind of imaging: imagining what I can do with the here and now, instead of yearning for some impossible past or improbable future  or “what if” for a now that can’t be.

Contentment.

Who might I invite, so spur-of the-moment? My Best Friend? Sounds good to my imagination’s ear… (And no, He isn’t imaginary!)

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This flight of imagination was inspired by this post, read just before the writing.

(So I can’t take credit for it at all. Thanks, T.)

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PS: Fantasy Become Reality:

 

The view just got clearer.

Last night.

It was just a spot of insight, one blur on the panorama refocused to true and real. It wasn’t really new information so much as uncovered truth my insides honestly knew all along, but had kept safely (safely?) buried.

What’s safe about burying truth? It only leaves you vulnerable to deceit from outside as well as in.

But we do it.

A lot.

 

The whole vast scene is clearing up, bit by bit. Not like when you adjust the binoculars and the whole comes through with sharper definition all at once—but this blur, over this area right here, then that little spot over there, then that splotch on that bit of foreground, then that huge smear on that expanse of background… eliminated one after one after one. Yet over time, through this seeming haphazard process the big picture is emerging in crystal crispness.

 

A movie brings an insight, and confession and repentance of foolish error… another film uncovers a painful memory… a chance comment in a book or conversation reawakens my mind to sleeping facts… and reflective, meditative scripture reading of late pries open locked parts of my heart, revealing things hidden way down in its corners… As in His presence I bring out each new (re?)discovery in its turn and hold it up, another lens segment washed clean with tears takes its place with the rest, and I see yet more of the bigger picture, and sometimes gasp with astonishment.

I see so many things, so much more clearly. The deliverance of God and the manipulation of man. The flaws in flesh fouling up faith with crazy people ambitions and fears—through history, through my life… what a blur!

But what a clearing all these episodes considered together are doing! As if a window on my world, all smudged with fooleries and denials and fears and deceptions and overzealous self-expectations, is getting scrubbed, scoured, and rinsed new, spot after spot.

I stand back, looking through, shaking my head—and wondering… just what I’m going to do with all this clarity…

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Written for Five Minute Friday, on the prompt word “View.”

From the top of the stairs the view straight ahead was of fog and haze, heavy and oppressive, announcing a replay of yesterday’s sweat and poor vision and fight with frustration.

I got fixated on the frustrating and forgot to look up.

When I finally did, what a whole new view, whole new world, right in the same vista!

Look what I was missing! (Click on the photo(s) for a more lifelike view.)

Glorious sky, reminding me of Colossians 3:1-4.

 

And so, let me lift up my eyes, my mind, my heart and soul, to where He is, and consider what He is, and how countless many reasons I have to praise Him.

(From Psalm 89) Because…

• He is a God of mercies (undeserved kindnesses)
• He is a God of faithfulness—to all generations
• His mercy shall be built up forever
• He shall establish it in the very heavens.
• He is a covenant-making God.
• He is a covenant-keeping God.

• The heavens themselves praise His wonders
• Praise for His faithfulness shall (and should) also arise in the assembly of saints
• No one in the heavens can be compared to Him
• No sons of the mighty can be likened to Him
• He is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints.
• He is to be held in reverence by all those around Him
• No one is mighty like He is

• His faithfulness surrounds Him.
• He rules the raging of the sea.
• When its waves rise, He can still them.
• He is able to break “powerful” human empires in pieces
• He is able to scatter their armies with His arm
• That arm of His is mighty
• Strong is His hand
• And high is His right hand.

• The heavens are His
• The earth is His also
• The world and everything in it belongs to Him
• He founded the heavens
• He founded the earth
• He founded the world and all it contains
• Mountains like Tabor and Hermon themselves rejoice in His name (in what He is)

• Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.
• Mercy goes before Him
• Truth goes before Him
• And blessed are the people who know the joyful sound!

• Blessed are they who walk in the light of His countenance
• In His name they can rejoice all day long
• In His righteous they are exalted
• In His favor their “horn” (strength) is exalted
• The shield of His people belongs to Him, as does their king.
• His mercies are worth singing about forever
• His faithfulness is worth making known to all generations.

And that’s just from the first eighteen verses!

Refreshed and exulting in Him today!

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Today it was just a song. That’s as far as formality reached in the long quiet time of early daylight. I spent a lot of time sitting, fresh from sleep and wide awake from fruit juice and sunlight and maybe the coffee but especially this chance to sit there in the quiet room and be with You, O Lover of my  soul.

And that’s why I sang. Because those words made their way to my lips, seemingly from nowhere, but they must have been rising from sleep deep in my heart.

Jesus Lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly, while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is nigh.

But there really is no tempest nigh right now, not that I know of, and the waters don’t engulf me like they did a week or so ago. But the now calmer call of my heart still remains that of the song, Jesus Lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.

It is all I need for worship expression to start today. For it says all and is all.

(Free writing for five short minutes this morning on Lisa Jo’s Five Minute Friday prompt, “Song.”)

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You might also like this related post:

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