Now I'm here blinking in the starlight.

I totally woke up in a cloud of fret this morning. I said good morning to the weight, dove under the rising wave, and, honestly, sprang out of bed, dragging the pink and white comforter with me.

I sat down a little hunched, hopeful, sort of, as I opened up to this Morning’s Office, to be observed on the hour or half hour between six and nine a.m., Sunday November 27. And it was only a little after four.

Jesus taught us, saying: “I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food, and the body more than clothing! Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet our heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are? Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single cubit to your span of life? Matthew 6:25-27

Manna for the day. 

Do not worry about your life.

Manna.

Just enough. My beloved Shepherd making me lie down in green pastures. And then, flip flip, over to the prayers for the twenty-seventh from John Baillie, naming the sin. Naming the faithlessness. 

O Lord my God, who lookest down in unspeakable love and tenderness upon the sorrows of earth, give me grace, I beseech Thee, to understand the meaning of such afflictions and disappointments as I myself am called upon to endure. Deliver me from all fretfulness. Let me be wise to draw from every dispensation of Thy providence the lesson Thou art minded to teach me. Give me a stout heart to bear my own burdens. Give me a willing heart to bear the burdens of others. Give me a believing heart to cast all burdens upon Thee. –John Baillie

And His Spirit wrapped His arms around me and comforted me with His peace. The peace that passes understanding. Beyond human imagination. 

My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up. –Psalm 5:3

And these days Everette is Rapunzel, Rapunzel from the movie Tangled. And she is wandering through her life with a hugest long trail of soft grey cotton cloth bound to her head, hijab-style, the swaddling wrap for Simone. 

And it is totally a mixed-up metaphor for me this morning, the lightness and softness of His burdens, the strength and courage of E, the stout-hearted princess facing her enemies, most, well actually, all of them created in her own imagination, and with the grand energy and willingness with which she casts her magical stream of hair to assist those around her and the sweet song she sings of golden healing around any ache, once again, real or imagined. 

Beyond human imagination. And, actually, E has the biggest and best imagination ever. And this peace is even beyond that. 

Glory be to Thee, O Father, and to Thee, O Christ, and to Thee, O Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Kneeling down and gathering His sustenance, while it is yet dark.

O LORD, I am your servant; I am your servant and the child of your handmaid; you have freed me from my bonds. Psalm 116:14

But the Lord answered, ‘Martha, Martha,’ he said, ‘you worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part, and it is not to be taken from her.’ Luke 10:38-42

Day after day, His manna and the admonitions and encouragement of His followers, is found waiting, perfectly formed from heaven for me, this very moment, to satisfy the hunger of my soul. 

O GOD, who of Thy love and pity didst send us Jesus Christ for the illumination of our darkness, give me wisdom to profit by the words He spoke and grace to follow in the steps He trod. 

·       When ye stand praying, forgive, if you have ought against any.

·       It is more blessed to give than receive.

·       Enter ye at the strait gate.

·       Judge not.

·       What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? –John Baillie

Lord our God, we thank you for giving us Jesus Christ, whose words remain living to this very day. You will make His words continually alive so that in the name of Jesus Christ joyful praises are sung to you, Almighty God and Father in heaven. Remember us all. Remember the particular needs of each one of us. Come to the world through the words of Jesus Christ. May His words come as your strong angels to the hearts of many to comfort and restore, to help and do miracles for those in need. May your name be praised through the great and mighty Word, Jesus Christ! Amen. - Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

And as I turn to eucharisto, thanking Him for His thousand gifts, today those from which I can see from my window, From my window, it is still dark outside. But You are there. And I know that the stars shine overhead, and the Catalinas loom in presence, and the fresh breeze of a new season swirls, even if I cannot see them yet. It is always darkest just before dawn. 

Glory be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, so it is now and so it shall ever be, world without end. Alleluia. Amen.

Flakes of manna new every morning

 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. Acts 4:30

If I push away the clouds of What Is Not Important, I find myself stumbling into one heart and one soul in the most unexpected places.

In my mother's living room for instance. Wrapped up with a big glistening bow from Our Father of Lights who knows how to give good gifts. Julie Harden has been around forever. She said that she and her husband always were standing up at those end of church altar calls for who feels the tugging of the heart strings to go unto all the corners of the earth to preach the gospel. So there were lots of times that The Harden family was hanging around the  press and I remember their cute little kids, especially the girl with dark curly hair and bright blue eyes that could see the world through a sharpened pencil. And John with the ink-stained apron wrapped around his battle with the creaky monster of a press. And there paths have gone hither and thither and mostly to those sort of nowhere spots so far away likely Papua New Guinea and back again and Sierra Vista now

And there was some staring at the floor as Jenny packed her bags. It was ever-so-clear that she had followed the Prompting and had hopped into the plane to walk through this shadowed valley with us and and to discover the cool streams and green pastures and most of all the I Shall Not Wantness of it all. A gaping maw loomed just ahead and it was beyond out collective imagination to as to who could step in the gap as I packed my bag for Nashville and Zachary and Emma packed their bag for California and Nicole packed her bag for Sedona. That was a lot of bag packing. And I suspect ol' momma just wanted to hop into one of them herself.

And then Julie Harden called. And stepped into the afternoon with such grace and wisdom that it would be not only impossible but flat out ungrateful to overlook God's faithful daily manna provision.

May my heart be constant in a place of praise, for He is worthy.

We blindfolded kids for the middle school Trust Walk

I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.  Psalm 71:10

I drove up to Phoenix Saturday, for a science fair, and basically for the whole trip, I thought about this verse, which led me to reflect on God’s goodness.  

And the image I had was of a bulbous squeezed-eyes-shut birdlet, beak wide open, perhaps naked-without-plumage trembling a bit with eagerness, waiting for his mother to fill his very wide open mouth.  

Not very attractive perhaps, at first glance. An absolute willingness to receive whatever tidbits that the mother bird deems appropriate, be it crushed grub or snatched insect, because of the implicit trust in both momma’s goodness and knowing. Sort of along the lines of If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

And the context of the verse is interesting, in that it is part of the conversation “Lord, teach us to pray.” 

After He taught them, “Give us today our daily bread,” and “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened,” He placed all of this teaching in a picture of a person pounding on the door of a friend in the middle of the night, begging to borrow bread for a guest, someone with quote, “shameless audacity.”

But Jesus does a little clarification move in Luke; He takes it a step further, and defines “good things,” for his disciples, the smaller crowd, as “the Holy Spirit... If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

And piled on top of this is the teaching from Chris yesterday, and the singing of Cameron: All I have is yours.  

That’s what the Father said to the older brother of the prodigal son.  “My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”

Everything.  I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. 

But, all of these promises are related to the little bird, wiggling with impatience, “Give me what is good for me. Give me what I need.”

I, who am Queen of the Prayer Lists.  The one who day after day who lays her tattered lists before her Father and waits.  But now that I am older.  And a tiny bit wiser, I am learning to frame these prayers with the words of Jesus, “But not my will, but Thine be done.” Not because I am mystical or wistful, but because I am a stubborn pragmatist.  Because I have been filled.  Because I have received my daily bread, I am perfectly willing to bang on the door.  A long time.

And quite honestly, my sustenance is most often manna, “What is it?” The unimagined. I had been longing for leeks and onions and garlic from Egypt, expectations tightly bound by past experiences, digging about in the dirt, rather than looking upward to heaven, for that which far more wonderful than the human mind can comprehend.  

Thus once again, LORD, I will open my mouth.  And my heart.  To receive Your goodness for today.  Give me today, my daily bread.