Spring jonquils pushing their hope up through snow frosted soil.

You sent a gracious rain, O God, upon your inheritance; you refreshed the land when it was weary. Psalm 68:9

Redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever I am; I know that the light of His presence With me doth continually dwell; Who lovingly guardeth my footsteps, And giveth me songs in the night. –Fanny Cosby

I am His inheritance.

And this time of Lenten reflection and repentance has been refreshing as it digs down deeply into the soil, loosening caliche-hard resentments and patterns. And thus I am soft enough to receive His grace. His gifts. In gratitude.

And of course the thing I remember from Sunday School is that even though Fanny Cosby was blind every single one of her songs speaks of seeing: His love is the theme of my song. I know I shall see in His beauty The King in whose law I delight.

And in His beauty I shall see The King.

And eucharisto always precedes the miracle.

And thus I turn to flip through Voskamp and there are the words I have internalized: When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?

A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.

Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy's flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust.

It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us. – Anne Voskamp, 1000 Gifts

In the predawn darkness the earth shook. And the stone was rolled away, so that we, His disciples, might enter in, see, and believe. 

And Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

And in His beauty I shall see The King.

Redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever I am.

Redeemed.

 And this was the chorus I sang this morning as I rode once again up Sentential Peak.

He did not come like a rushing mighty wind. But gradually the Person of the Holy Ghost filled all our thoughts, His Presence filled all the place, and His light seemed to penetrate all the hidden recesses of our hearts. -Rees Howells

Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps; Fire and hail, snow and fog, tempestuous wind, doing his will; Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars; Wild beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds; Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the world; Young men and maidens, old and young together. Let them praise the Name of the LORD, for His Name only is exalted, His splendor is over earth and heaven. Psalm 148:6–13

Perspective.

These have been quiet days. The gunk which is sweeping Tucson laid me flat on my back for five days and counting. Lots and lots of quiet. Well, except for the hacking cough. And it has been one of those gripping headache sicknesses where I have felt too lousy to even read; just a page or two and then quiet. Quiet under the February blueness and surrounded by Alan’s peonies. And Pippen is always snuggled somewhere in the midst of the Hosterman knit blanket.

Praying through Rees Howell battling the Nazis long hour after long hour, front after front, faithful and unrelenting. The battle is not against flesh and blood but principalities and against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. What does it mean to be an intercessor, one who stands in the gap.

Reading Passage to India that captures all peoples so clearly.

Perspective.

And it has been a Lenten time of repentance. Confessing ingratitude. Expectations. Resentment. Accusation. Tools of the Evil One straight from the first temptation in the Garden which smashed the joyous unity with Him.  Allowing His loving claws to rake down deeply through the dragon skin that surrounds my heart.

In the light of His purity, it was not so much sin we saw as self. We saw pride and self-motives underlying everything we had ever done. -Rees Howells, Intercessor

And now it has been eight days and counting. Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

And this has been my prayer for myself on Saturday, every Saturday, for years upon years: LORD please make me ever aware of Your Spirit, moment-by-moment wisdom, quicken my spirit to immediate, full-of-faith obedience.  Cause me to be thankful…this obedience results in a joy that brings glory to you.  

And I slip up so often on this moment-by-moment wisdom.

Quicken my spirit to immediate, full-of-faith obedience.

And for me, wisdom usually equals silence.

And obedience usually means silence.

Usually. Intercessor. Allowing the Spirit to groan deeply within.

And to stand back. And let Him do His thing.

But He showed us, 'There is all the difference in the world between your surrendered life in my hands, and I living My life in your body.' We read the Acts afresh, and found we were reading, not the acts of the apostles, but the acts of the Holy Ghost. -Rees Howells, Intecessor

So I read Acts as well. Afresh.

And sometimes obedience is not silence, but a bold leap into words. Sometimes. Just this week, I felt the familiar tug: God longs to demonstrate His great love and power by removing that tumor… and the next day I received this email:

I just want to share this:

I went to get the magnetic resonance yesterday. The radiologist (if that is how you say it in English, haha) looked at the X-rays and the results from the other tests. He asked me a set of questions. Then, they put me in the capsule for about 40 minutes. They took me out and he said he was confused because he did not see anything, he even asked me about the X-rays, he asked me if those were recent, and I told him they were from this week. So, although he seemed to be confused, he told me he was going to run another resonance so they put my body half way into the capsule and ran another test for about 30 minutes. In the end, he told me he cannot explain himself because what is reflected in the X-rays did not show up in the images in the magnetic resonance. Inside my head, I kept thinking, he cannot explain it but I can, I know God has his ways. 

Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps; Fire and hail, snow and fog, tempestuous wind, doing his will; Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars; Wild beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds; Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the world; Young men and maidens, old and young together. Let them praise the Name of the LORD, for His Name only is exalted, His splendor is over earth and heaven. 

And somehow all of this craziness and pain and beauty and delight and heartbreak and sea-monsters and fire and tempestuous wind is to His exaltation. King of the earth and all peoples. Praise the LORD.

And today’s Joy Dare was for the ugly-beautiful gifts, for example this ugly cough and the beautiful silence. His gift.

Silence.

Words.

And His wisdom to know the difference.

And each of us wields a big black Sharpie every day.

Call to Worship Blessed be the LORD, from everlasting and to everlasting; and let all the people say, “Amen!” Psalm 106:48

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:6-8

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. I John 4:7-9

Contemplation On Maundy Thursday we remember the last evening Jesus shared with His disciples in the upper room before His arrest and crucifixion. The name “Maundy Thursday” comes from the Latin mandatum novum, referring to the “new commandment” Jesus taught his disciples. In John 13, Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

So yesterday I got schooled one more time in all the things I already know in my head, but I got reminded of it in living and breathing multi-color. This had been a rough, rough week; chaos was reigning in the classroom even though I was running in continual reevaluation and readjustment mode, so I was quite resolved to walk into the day firm, pleasant, and quite full of consequences.

As we headed into a fairly simple ten-question, one-word answer quiz focusing on reading comprehension, I clutched a big black marker. Anyone who talked during the quiz was going to get a big black “X” on their paper. It took me twenty-nine minutes to get Period Two ready to go in their assigned seats, with a packet and a pointed pencil. And I had to call the monitor and someone got hauled out to the office. And really, he could have hauled out the entire class. Really.

Sigh.

So the next period, the first three people who listened carefully and got the right answer written down would get a big black happy smile on their paper. And the class rocked. And I pushed the monitor button again, but this time so he could see the entire class on task with their answers written down and their hands waving in the air. Miss, Miss. Look at my answer! Look at me! And the next class. And the next class.

It was the same big black marker.

And yesterday Nicole found a crumpled up note on the floor of her room as she was tidying up. And she stuffed it in her jean pocket and didn’t read it until she got home. A note that verbalized a life change. Really. A girl who transformed from a dirty-hair-in-the-face cutter to someone taping up Abraham Lincoln quotes about The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

And the Enemy seeks to steal, kill and destroy. But He came to seek and to save those who were lost. And weak.

Me.

Closing Prayer Lord Jesus Christ, You stretched out Your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of Your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know You to the knowledge and love of You, for the honor of Your name. Amen.