And this morning the round moon was in the West, sailing on an ocean of rain

Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good; sing praises to His Name, for it is lovely. Psalm 135:1

Focusing Prayer: God who knows me better than I know myself and who loves me better than I love myself and who guides me better than I can guide myself…in You alone I trust.

So I carried the question of trust to my ladies last night. The ladies who are faithful and honest and wise and have lots of their own stuff to mess with, but who are giving me every Wednesday night for as long as it takes. 

Because every which way possible God had been saying, “Trust Me.” And really, that has been the Big Question of all of this pain and upheaval and long weary nights and long weary days. 

Do you trust Me?

And I can look back over the journals from the Camino:

Whether I am curving up or down the road, the one clear thing is that I have absolutely no idea what lies ahead, except for His presence, and

But it doesn't matter, really, because He is faithful through the winds and the flames. And I have committed to follow Him. No matter what the cost. Which is a scary thing to say, as I have lived and learned in the past and

But then Jesus came, speaking of a peace that took root inside a person. This peace was impervious to any form of opposition. You can do away with the body, Jesus said, but never the soul. His was a radical idea: that all things start in a person's heart.

And the thing about these ladies is that they pause and listen well. And then they speak of one accord. And what they said last night was that trusting God might look different than I imagined.

And after I came home after some quesadillas and salad sorts of things, I picked up Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell.  And he too spoke of one accord, He and the Spirit, from his spot in the closet on a chair, just like my little closet here.

And Jesus is not about some golden gates and paved streets in the future, but right now. Salvation is now. Jesus wants to heal my soul–now. And as long as I am going and going and going I don’t have to stop and face the pain. Stopping is just so difficult.

Usually we can just go on. We put on the mask, suck it up (or in the Coverdale verbiage: pull up my britches) and keep going. We only change when we hit the abyss.

And last night the moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas. A huge perfectly round globe, preparing for an eclipse somewhere in the world.

And Voscamp has a thing about full moons, as being part of the joy of the LORD. Joy that fills her under the full moon is the joy that always fills God. This is His endless experience because this is who He is, beauty overflowing. Her moon wonder is but a glimpse, foretaste, of what God always sees, experiences.

He is not bound by space or time.

The glory of God is the human being fully alive and the life of the human consists in beholding God. –Irenaueus

And this is what the ladies had to say last night, in perfect agreement with Bell and Voscamp and the LORD God Almighty: One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD, and to seek Him in His temple.

One thing.

And of course, my friend C. S. Lewis: We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

Yes, and God has beauty for me, me, created for His purposes, for His honor and glory forever.

Heavenly purity!

Blessed Emptying

Unreserved submission!

Through these, God is welcomed into the very center of the heart.

Everything is Yours,

Everything is from You and for You.

I no longer have anything to be concerned about,

I have no hand in the arrangement of one single moment of my life.

It is for you, LORD, to regulate everything,

Directions, humiliations, means of making us holy,

Perfection, salvation–all are Your business, LORD

Mine is to be satisfied with Your work,

And not to demand the choice of action or condition,

But to leave everything to Your good pleasure. –Jean-Pierre de Caussade

And my chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

And It might just look a little different than the long and winding road I have trod so long.

Amen.