...the offer of a holiday at sea. -C. S. Lewis

...being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light. Colossians 1:11-12

Jesus did love a man who was able, sometimes, to be reckless. He did not care for the rulers as a class, but when one of them forgot his dignity, and ran after a peasant teacher and fell on the road at His feet, we read that ‘Jesus, seeing him, loved him.’ He saw a widow flinging into the treasury all she had, which no doubt was a very foolish action, but it stirred His heart with gladness to see somebody venturing herself simply upon God. He wanted life in men, energy, impulse; and in His Church He has often found nothing but a certain tame decorum, of which even He can make little.   -W. M. Macgregor

Dear Father in heaven, we thank you. We want to be ready to thank You at all times. We look forward with joy to your kingdom and await the redemption that will free us to the very depth of our being, to the praise and thanks and honor of Your name. Be with the many people who come hungering and thirsting to You. Bring deliverance to those whose hearts are true, and let them know that the power of Your kingdom is truly present here on earth in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

It is so easy to get sucked into the tit for tat all in the name of prudence and “fairness.” But the great sucking noise is actually the joy and thankfulness being sucked out of my soul. I know I hear again and again a corrective admonition when I shrug my shoulders with a “It doesn’t really matter,” but in the quiet of the morning, when I cry out to My Lord, and settle into His bosom, when surely I have stilled and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child with his mother, Like a weaned child is my soul within me, it has nothing to do with tight arguments lined up with signed documents and chronological receipts clipped together, and has everything to do with His grace and His sufficiency.

It doesn’t really matter.

There is no satisfaction in this world. Again and again and again, this is His word about the lilies of the valley and our days are like the grass, when the wind goes over it, it is gone.  Why would I ever want to build storage sheds to fill with cobwebs and rust?

And yet those who are planted in the house of The LORD will flourish.

Blessed.

May I hunger and thirst for His righteousness,

For then I shall be filled.

May I be merciful,

That I may receive His mercy,

Forgive and I shall be forgiven,

Give and it will be given to me,

Heaping and overflowing,

Poured into my lap.

And truly all that I long for is to bring a smile to My Lord’s lips.

May I stir His heart with gladness.

To be free to the very depths of my being,

To the praise and thanks and honor of His name,

For He is good.

Come on in the door is unlocked

 I will freely sacrifice unto Thee: I will praise Thy name, O Lord; for it is good. Psalm 54:6

One could poke and pry at the idea of a good name on many levels, but one level is the, “Hey you can trust that guy, no matter what.  Doesn’t even really need a firm grandpa-handshake, his name is good.”

And while it is straight up right to praise His name, because it is good, there is another side to the story.  The freely sacrifice bit, because His shovel is a lot bigger than my teaspoon.  And last night I was reminded of His promise of It shall be given to you, heaping and overflowing into your lap.

So I started daydreaming yesterday, as I leaned into the computer screen mid-afternoon, almost to sort of prop myself up.  All those Spelling Bees and Math Olympics and Creative Writings and the Administrators and Board program and straightening up the head of accredited schools email list so that I could send out some advertising helps before the end of the day started to fuzz a bit and I started fondling my little daydream.  Of an afternoon nap.  Thinking through how I was going to fit it in with Grandpa and not having any food in the house for dinner and wanting to visit with Jack and Mary Anne because I had been out of town for four days accrediting a school and then, well, last night was penciled in the gathering together of so many very cool devotionals into some sort of cohesiveness and then pop the February 1 PDF off to the church secretary after one more editing read through after swimming this morning.  That was the plan.  

And Gio had taught Jinsheng how to make a fire the day before which is very important, so Jinsheng built his first fire in a fireplace ever and I sliced all of my food in the house, which happened to be a spaghetti squash, in half, dashed it with olive oil and set it in the oven and slid so very deep into the sofa cushions. Down, down, and out.  

Bam, bam, bam on the knocker.  Like no one ever knocks.  

Go away.

Bam, bam.  

And there at the door was my very invited dinner guest and his friend and two bottles of wine, one red and one white because he didn’t know what I was serving and neither did I, and a box of chocolate bon bons, fresh from overseeing the entire western half of South Sudan village health initiatives, here for three days in Tucson.  

And somehow there were a few more snippets of beets to chop and there is always an onion or two and what a lovely evening it was, with visions of early morning rides across the flat expanses and tales of base camp treks in Napal and who is your favorite soccer player and whatever-happened-to questions and perfect popcorn and Alan reading White With Two Sugars (Please) to a poet readying himself for Machu Picchu and of course there was the Voice of God in the corn fields of the Dominican Republic and Giovanni bringing in more firewood to stoke the fire and bringing out the tea basket and Igor’s teapot, and yes, His name is Good.  

Somewhere in the late evening, before it swung into early morning, He swept in with eagle’s wings and lifted me past the other side of weariness.  

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings, 

Bear you on the breath of dawn, 

Make you to shine like the sun, 

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

And all of the seven hours of stories, even the one of celebrating Christmas Day with an off-the-charts case of malaria that required a intramuscular quinine treatment in Nairobi or the handfuls-of-Castor-beans story, and certainly the Danielito the wood chopper story, are reminders that no gift is really a sacrifice because His name is good: good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

I will praise Thy name, O Lord.