I am so exhausted, I can’t write.

But wait. I. am. writing. My fingers are moving on a keyboard. But little, with as little exertion as possible.

I am so fatigued I can barely think.

Husband has gone out for take-out.

I thought I was long past reaching beyond my limits, pushing myself further than my body could sensibly attain. I thought I had learned when time to stop had arrived, and that I would stop, and simply draw aside with Him, or do some quiet thing.

No, still driven. To distraction. To the point where now I must lose a day to gain my breath and stamina and equilibrium and get on with the next thing. I feel embarrassed, foolish, vain.

I have about five post starts in my head, and one post nearly done on computer. But I got interrupted by pleasant surprises and busy ambitions, and in I dived, over my head…

So, instead of those posts, this. This for dearly beloved cyber-friends, who got concerned at a previous gap when my posts weren’t appearing as usual. You astonished me with God’s love shed abroad in your hearts and emails. I find amazing this thing that can happen in blogging communities, where new friendships arise from who-knows-where, maybe even continents apart,  and yet draw close in Him.

I feel I need to let you know: I’ll be back! All is well but this deep fatigue. I’m happy a-plenty. I’m just physically wiped out.

Yet there are so many reasons to praise Him.  In my personal journal, I’ve already counted 735, backed by scripture, and I don’t think I’ll run out of new ones anytime soon. I’ll be copying some into a coming post. Shortly, God willing.

Blessings to all. You are all blessings to me.

These are the photo prompts for this week on Scavenger Hunt Sunday: Sidewalk, Inspiring, Close-up, Time, and With Mirror. Here’s what I came up with:

Sidewalk:

“Teach me Your way, O LORD, And lead me in a smooth path…” -Psalm 27:11

Inspiring:

“I will praise You, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing to You among the nations. For Your mercy reaches unto the heavens, And Your truth unto the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; [Let] Your glory [be] above all the earth.” -Psa 57:9-11

(The sky-view out my bedroom window almost always stirs my thoughts or emotions.)

Close-up:

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” -Psalm 56:8

Time:

To everything [there is] a season, A time for every purpose under heaven. -Ecclesiastes 3:1

With Mirror:

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” -1 Corinthians 13:12

*****

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You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. -Psa 56:8 NLT

I keep it on my window sill, to remind me — of this verse, with its constant comfort.

“I wonder how many quarts of tears I’ve cried in my lifetime,” I mused to Husband.

“Probably not as many as you think,” He answered.

So I tried to google it, read where someone actually measured and multiplied and added up. But no. Who would waste their time on such a task? (Although God’s word says He does!) But I got the idea that the volume isn’t all that gigantic.

I may feel that I’ve wept buckets, but my tears compared to all that humanity has cried amount to no more than a drop in the bucket.

Yet His word and His Spirit tell me that he keeps track of them all, and more as individual drops than one wet mass.

Therefore the bottle with the glassy droplets on the window sill.

It’s been a weepy week, after old griefs, revisited, opened up the sluices.

Therefore the photo, and the scripture, and the comfort, and the thanks.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. -Hebrews 4:15 ESV

He is… a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. -Isaiah 53:3

You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. -Psa 56:8 NLT

*****

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Linking with Five Minute Friday at The Gypsy Mama’s place, on the prompt

“Identity”

It was one of those “God-incidences:” I found it when I was putting together a study on First Peter for a woman’s Sunday school class. I don’t remember how. Just suddenly it was there. And oh, it fit like a glove on what I was seeing in the beginning of the great Epistle.

It was all about The Seven Snares of Worldliness. And the snare in each case was a false sense of identity.

Things like, I am…

what I do

what others perceive me to be

my self-sufficient capabilities

my religious accomplishments

And it explained and gave the effects of each snare (which are good clues to determine which lie(s) about your identity you most likely believe).

Then followed a list of scriptural antidotes.

But it didn’t give any Bible references.

Funny thing was, I didn’t need any. I had them sitting right in front of me, staring me in the face. In 1 Peter 1.

There I see my identity.

My identity lies in Christ.

I am who and what I am in Him.

I am a stranger in this land (the earth).

I am a child of God the Father.  He has begotten me again, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

I am an heir, to an inheritance that can never perish, get spoiled, spotted, damaged, or diminished— reserved forever for me in heaven.

I, my essential person, myself, am kept by the power of God unto final deliverance in the final day.  

I am a sanctified one, that is, separated to be His own, made holy.

So I needn’t  worry about the thieves of false identity, like

paralysis of limbs or senses,

or fire or flood,

or deceived or whimsical changing of people’s perceptions or memories

What must I do to safeguard and maintain my identity? Simply live out what God’s given me and made me!

And by what means, what power? Peter answers that one, too. As I read his introductory words again, I see all the doing is done by and through God: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

An identity created, re-begotten, sanctified and kept forever, that nothing and no one can ever steal from me.

*****

Why is it that when we (at our place) remodel or redecorate just one room, the whole house seems to go to chaos? Lampshades on the dining table, putty knives and spackle at the kitchen sink, boxes full of books jammed here, there, and everywhere? And furniture shoved together in the most incongruous company in rooms where they never would otherwise appear.

I made it my ambition to clear the kitchen of 99% of its dishevelment last night so we could at least eat our outdoor-grilled hamburgers in visual peace, but everywhere else downstairs disorder still reigned so strong, we decided to climb into bed early and read to each other chapters from the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency book I’d gleefully discovered on the public library’s large print shelf the day before.

Oasis in a sea of confusion.

Sometimes my soul needs a remodel, an inward home improvement, an overdue update. So God goes to work — often through various human agents. And what He means for good, I see only as upheaval. Where He’s working to make better eventual order, I see only disturbing chaos. Maybe He’s working only in one area of my life, but the whole thing seems thrown out of kilter. And sometimes it hurts. Really hurts.

If a house could feel physical sensations, how ours would have wrenched in pain last night as Husband pried that casing off that window! It even groaned and whimpered and kind of screamed as it was. But the window will turn out so improved once he gets done sanding around it, and pounding on it, and all that enjoyable stuff.

And I wonder if the house wouldn’t ache with missing the old sofa we hauled out yesterday morning. And the pictures that hung on its walls. It even hurt me oddly to see that faded, frayed, dust-filled, spring sprung old thing depart, because of all the memories that sat on it.

But, like a bad habit, how badly it needed a healthier replacement! (We are getting leather because of so many allergic family members.) And oh, how long overdue this repainting is!

Spiritual remodels and other soul improvements usually disrupt, too, even to the point of chaos, and often bring pain, but simply because that’s the only way things will be made better.

May I remember this the next time painful upsets throw me into confusion. It may just be that God is doing some soul improvement, and the outcome will be well worth the annoyance, disturbance, and yes, even pain. I have no idea how amazing the outcome can be until I reach its end and bask in its beauty. How good then also to find and seize every possible oasis of calm with Him! 

Beauty to you, today, dear friends, and some oasis of peace, in whatever “chaos” might be multiplying around you!

 *****

COUNTING MORE REASONS WHY I SHOULD PRAISE HIM

(All these from Psalm 139)

Because He knows each individual human thoroughly; because He has searched me and known me

184 – Because He knows my sitting down and my rising up

185 – Because He understands each individual’s thoughts (including mine)

186 – Because He is so foreknowing, He knows every word that’s going to be on every tongue before it’s spoken

187 – Because He hedges me in, before and behind, and lays His hand on me {This is a remodel!}

188 – Because His knowledge is way beyond mine, too wondrous for me to fathom, let alone attain.

189 – Because there is nowhere I can go from His presence

190 – Because His presence reaches to heaven

191 – Because His presence reaches even to hell

192 – Because even if I lived in the middle of the sea, even there His hand would lead me, hold me {remodel me?}

193 – Because He personally bothers with tiny individual humans that way

194 – Because there is no darkness His knowledge cannot (and does not) penetrate

195 -Because He formed my inward parts

196 – Because He “knit” me together in my mother’s womb

197 – Because He made me fearfully, wondrously

198 – Because He is fearfully wonderful (Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate)

199 – Because His works {and remodels} are marvelous, and that my soul knows full well

200 – Because my frame, my bones, were not hidden from Him when I was formed in “secret”

201 – Because He saw, when was skillfully wrought in the lowliness of earth

202 – Because His eyes saw my substance being yet unformed

203 – Because in His book all my days were written beforehand

204 – Because he fashioned my days for me — all of them

205 – Because His thoughts are so precious

206 – Because His thoughts are boundless, beyond numbering

207 – Because when I wake, I am still with Him, just am (because His presence is always there, here, everywhere)

208 – Because despite all this wonder in Him, blood-thirsty men speak against Him wickedly

209 – Because I can ask Him to search my heart and know it, and of course He will do it

210 – Because I can ask Him to try me, to know (identify) my anxieties, and know that He can and will do it

211 – Because I can ask Him to see if there’s any wicked way in me {assessment for soul improvement}

212 – Because I can turn to Him, relying on Him to know all this, and so can ask Him to lead me in the way everlasting. {This is a spiritual remodel! Thank You, Lord, and all praise to You!}

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