The Sylvr Pen

Did you ever only realize, once you sat down to a luxurious meal, that you were ravenously, nearly painfully hungry? And so you found yourself diving in and devouring the food as if there’d be none tomorrow?

I experienced that this morning, soul-hunger-wise.

Opening an ABS “Encounter with God” booklet to January 1, I let it lead me through Psalm 90, through “Think Further” thoughts, through beautiful considerations of God’s  great power and His beautiful love for otherwise insignificant little us. And I couldn’t get enough!

So what if the page was designated for this year’s first day? The present moment is a new beginning. Every moment holds that potential.

So on I went, savoring the flavoring, immersed, engrossed in words well put on printed page, and thoughts and feelings welling from my own head and heart. And song emerged: “O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus,” which my heart demanded my lips sing soft in morning stillness. And as I sang I felt the words, felt the love, like that mighty ocean, all around me, underneath me, lifting me up to Him.

How did I get so hungry? Circumstances, both blessed and less-than-welcome (like return of a cold I’d thought myself rid of), threw my usual routines into chaos through the last several days. I hadn’t neglected (spiritual) nibbling here and there along my ragged, meandering path. But mere nibbling, though it staves off starvation, seldom satisfies full and deep and rich and intense as this grand breaking of fast did!

Ahhhh. I got up from there nearly staggered, as a holiday feast might do for a soul lately getting by on crumbs outside the gate.

How I thank Him for His grace gifts of this morning! 

May you also find rich feasting this day, fellow pilgrim!

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STORIES OF RAIN AND RIVERS

(Go here to see and get involved in the 10,000 REASONS CHALLENGE)

(I’ll post more about this soon — maybe tomorrow.

But I hope you’ll go ahead and check it out! It’s got me all excited!)

Sometimes I lose Mondays. Other days, too, but more often Mondays.

I “lost” one yesterday. At least that’s what I thought.

The disappointments all ganged up and clobbered me. I’d put my hope and trust in people, and well, people let you down, and some let you down more than others, and more unexpectedly, and that’s like a dream wherein the floor you’re standing on suddenly retracts and disappears, and down you go, falling, falling, and you know how that feels in a dream, but it feels a lot worse in life.

So I “wasted” the day — well, much of it — weeping and fuming and wailing (when no one could hear) and grumbling and growling (silent or not, depending on whether I seemed safely secluded).

And I knew all through the process (at least in my head) that I needn’t fret, because God is my all, all I’ll ever need, and I should be trusting Him instead of people… “But God… But, God!…”

It was a refining fire. I knew it, even as I watched all that ugly, stinky dross come floating up from my impure insides for Him to pour away, and make me shinier cleaner, purged of all my angry hurt.

Yes, trust not in a human (Ps 118:8-9, 146:3; Mic 7:5)… even self! I surprised and disappointed me as much as anyone else did.

Was it good? Bad?

Both.

The bad was the attitudes I hated seeing in myself.

The good: my God who listened like the perfect loving Father He is — and walked me through the learning. And when I got all done and, worn out from my flailing, came at last to rest (in His arms), I knew I’d just gotten a good, needed lesson.

The whole thing. I needed the disappointment, to get me back to trusting the reliable, drawn back to Him instead of drawn away to my foolish idols.

He is good, and that’s what made it good — not a wasted day after all.

… And today is Tuesday.

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The Beauty in His Grip

White

floats down,

swirls ’round,

builds up,

drifts in,

piles higher,

to cover,

or

to cleanse…

“Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.”

-Psalm 51:7

[Hand-milled goat-milk soap made from this basic “Homestead Soap”:]

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Taking up a prompt again from…

Empty.

Just looking at the word I feel it.

No, I don’t, really…

I remember it!

That old hollow that yawned within, that bottomless pit into which I stuffed things and events and experiences and busy lists of accomplishments, and yet it gaped still wide.

He said it, ages ago, Augustine did, that in us each that hungry vacuum lies that only the God of Life can fill, and so we have no peace, no slaking of our famine, are ever restless till we find our rest in Him, till He fills with His fullness and the hunger goes away, and all that stuff we used to grab to stuff the gap grows meaningless, or at least peripheral.

I’ve come to like the empty page, the empty vase, the empty calendar, with slots where I can place a thought, a flower, a time of prayer or a quiet walk, and still give all the wiggle room that lets each stretch wide and high and reach and spread. I need that “white space” into which to pour out that which God pours in…

I love the empty waiting canvas of a day, a night, a week, an eternity…

But not that vacuum of my past, dark craving cavern of a famished soul, athirst for…?

God!

For Christ,

who fills all with His fullness.

“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ…” –Colossians 2:9-10 NIV

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Dinner’s finished, and we pull out Bibles, to plow on through Ezekiel, book most grueling. I’m scraping and rinsing dishes, putting leftovers in the fridge, while I see him open to ribbon-marker, look down on pages, go silent, intent.

I move back to my chair across from his, and he looks up, a little flushed, heaves a sigh.

“This is going to be hard,” he says.

I think we’re facing more puzzles of words inscrutable (like so much of this prophecy book), and begin to laugh.

“No, not that. It’s convicting!”

Ezekiel 33.

So we read. And reread. And pause between to think what this says to us, because we do get its basic meaning. This chapter portion is not riddle-wrought. It’s just hard other ways.

“You look like you’ve been hit,” I say, and he glances over, sheepish. Something’s on his mind…

“I have to go see someone,” his voice speaks hushed, as if to himself.

And we finish and pray — including for open doors this week, and then he goes to tune in the movie we’d planned to watch together. But now I’ve gone sober, too — thoughtful — and  entertainment doesn’t seem to sit right, fit right.

I think I need to go be quiet. And so I ask to be excused and tell him why, and he’s fine with that, he’ll watch the baseball guy film, and he doesn’t mind alone.

So I come and sit sober, moved somehow almost to tears, a thing within my spirit hard to draw by words. “Be still,” says my soul, “and sober. And think.”  

I need my Bible handy, to read when ready, till then to sit beside. I need to pray. Prayer is the proper and effective start of all things to be done for God, for men: loved ones, or lost, or erring. Not to stop at prayer, but yes, begin there. And TV movies would only intrude, eclipse.

~

This, I realize, is a sort of fasting. No, not from food, of course not, for we just got up from a satisfying meal. But a fast from entertainment, amusement.

This is another natural fast, rolling from within. The Spirit says, “Come,” and the human soul can answer… or divert to some diversion, divert away from God, and thus ignore the passage that now weighs heavy on the heart.

This is the birth of a fast.

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This post is last in a short (and certainly not exhaustive) series exploring “fasting.” Related posts in order, first to last:

Fast Fast, Slow Fast, or No Fast? 

Fast: Fact and Fiction

Fasting Fail — And the Fast we All Need to Do

The Ache (Obliquely related, but helpful to read with the rest)

Backing into Fasting 

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