revival

am i "Your person"?
do i belong to You?
am i called by Your name?

am i humbling myself?
do i think of myself more highly than i ought to think?
do i think i am better than others,
that i know more than others?
do i think i understand the situation better than You Yourself?
or that the way You are working is not best?
do i want my own way?
am i respectful of other people?
am i reverent toward You?

am i praying?
is my life a prayer to You?
do i lay out my thoughts with a unceasing awareness
that i am interacting with You--
You see my thoughts,
You know my motives and intentions?
am i hiding?
am i walking with You?
You are here.
You are always here.

am i seeking Your face?
am i looking for You with all my heart,
expecting to find You?

am i turning from my wicked ways?
when You show me my lack of love,
am i grieved?
do i turn away in disgust
and beg you to fill me with Your love?
when You show me my meanness,
do i abhor it
and yearn for kindness to be constantly on my lips?
do i earnestly desire a tender heart?
when you show me a deceit that i hold dear,
do i let it go
and love Your truth
though the rending away of the putrid lie causes me pain?
when you show me my disobedience,
do i acknowledge my fault
and begin acting obediently?

oh, Lord!
search me and know my heart!
try me, and know my thoughts!
see if there be any wicked way in me,
and lead me in Your everlasting way!

tryst

oh, i yearn to spend time with my Beloved,
the One who loves me
infinitely,
unconditionally!

spending time listening to His voice
is my delight,
and i love to think about the things He says
all through the day
and even in the night.
His words and wisdom return to me
in my conversations with other people.

i have a confession.
i have not always found joy
in the time that i spent
with the Lover of my soul.

i used to drag myself to spend time with Him,
rudely thinking about other subjects,
more interesting to me
(i now say to my shame)
than the words He spoke to my heart.

my heart was hard
and closed
by the distractions
of alluring ambitions and worries.

how the change happened i am not quite certain.
i saw the dearth of delight,
the preoccupation with things of no value.
i asked Him to help me change.

In His patient love,
He gave and gave and gave,
and i found the hardness of my heart soften
like the parched ground
in a long but gentle rain.
the seed of His wisdom and His graciousness
penetrated the surface,
put down roots,
and bore fruit.

for me?

thank you, Christina.

i would send it on, but almost all my blog friends already have it.

confession

when Christina was three years old, we rented a modular home for a short time.

one day, i noticed a black spot about the size of a quarter on the carpet in our bedroom which also doubled as a study. upon inspecting the spot more closely, it appeared to be an ink spot. you know, the kind of ink spot that happens when a child mashes the point of a felt-tip marker onto a piece of construction paper.

so i went over the checklist of possible guilty parties. me? nope. i knew i hadn't done it. my husband? highly unlikely. Christina. bingo! (that's what happens when your an only child; you always get blamed.)

so i called her in and asked her if she had done it. she denied it, the little sinner. so i talked to her soberly about telling the truth. after a few minutes, she finally confessed.

that night i was telling my husband about how i had confronted Christina, and how she had finally confessed.

"what spot?" he asked me.

"the one by the desk," i explained.

he looked at the spot. "that was there when we moved in."

shame washed over me. Christina was asleep, but i confessed to her first thing in the morning, and she sweetly forgave me.


years later. . .she still remembers it.

when the Lord says that the older women are not to be "false accusers", He gives us plenty of time to start working on it when we are young.

the moral of the story? don't accuse your child (or anyone else for that matter) of wrong-doing without true evidence.

God be merciful to me!

idle thoughts

they are so frightening--
the thoughts that i am thinking
in the night as i drop off to sleep,
in the morning as the quiet dawn approaches,
in the quiet spaces of my days.
the imaginations,
the speculations,
the suspicions,
the arguments.

of no value.

insanity, if the truth be told.
the thoughts of my heart and mind
are carrying me outside the secure boundaries of truth
into the minefield of conjecture.

i am afraid.
i need to be rescued
from slavery
to my own fears
and animosities.

the love for all
that i idealize--
i do not find it in my heart
or my soul.

i am humbled.

i am undone!
break down the prison
of my own making!
oh, Lord, deliver me!


He comes.
my eyes are opened,
and i see His glorious beauty.
i see that He knows me as i really am,
and still He loves me,
He is tender toward me.

i am changed.
i can no longer love the schemes that i devise
in my fantasies--
fantasies that move me beyond the limits of sanity.

oh, tear them down!
tear,
tear,
tear them down!
let not one of them remain!

let my thoughts reflect His beauty!
let my heart be filled with the light of His splendor!
may He rule the kingdom of my heart,
and every thought be subjugated
to the purity of His gracious truth.

friend or foe?

intuition is such an uncanny thing.
who knows where it comes from?
why it exists?
why sometimes we can be so accurate
in perceiving what is under the surface
with so little evidence?

sometimes.
sometimes intuition is amazingly accurate.
but sometimes it can be devastatingly misleading.
it should be packaged with a warning label.

consider a related truth.
"do not be wise in your own eyes.
fear the Lord,
and turn away from evil."
the process of being liberated
from an unhealthy dependence on intuition
is somewhat painful,
but well worth the pain.
after all, admitting that my thoughts
are wandering
down the paths
of my own
selfish
wisdom
is humbling though it is good and healing.
being wise in my own eyes is an evil which i can and must shun.
when i am wise in my own eyes,
i cannot have a proper respect for God.

somehow when i am on that path away from God,
depending on my intuition and keen perception,
in my imagination i begin to think that i am omniscient.
not that i would admit it in so many words;
however, i become confident that i know everything that is relevant
about a given situation.

when i start concentrating on respecting God,
i begin to see that there are huge areas of time and motive
that i do not begin to understand.
every person involved has a 24/7 life
of which i know only a tiny percentage.
in contrast to my limited perspective,
God knows every thought, word, action, and motive
of every person involved.
He loves each of us
and wants to use every situation to reveal Himself to us.

my heart changes.

i realize i can trust Him,
and that i need to focus
on being and doing what He wants me to be and do.

and there is such joy in obeying Him,
because i am free from a burden
He never intended for me to bear.

Tunnel Vision

so, when i look at the computer screen,
i can only see a circle about 2 inches in diameter.

this is true.

i have retinitis pigmentosa,
which is the fancy name for tunnel vision.

the rest of my vision is patchy--
that is, i don't know where i can see
and where i can't.
there are blind spots,
and mostly-blind spots.

i smile.

i've had this condition all my life,
but i didn't know it
until three and a half years ago.

i thought everybody saw like i did.

i was so good at compensating,
no one knew.

but there were odd things.

people just thought i had great concentration.

that's how blind spots are.
you think everyone sees just like you do.

but they may see more,
or they may see less.

may our merciful Lord grant us understanding and increased wisdom.