I first read this quote by Rainer Marie Rilke in the book by Ben Palpant entitled “Letters from the Mountain.”
“Most experiences are unsayable.” There are mysterious existences whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
Rilke and Ben Palpant
There is a sound of leaves falling upon leaves that is so indescribable. I cannot imagine being able to mimic that sound. More than just a rustling, shifting, crunching. Nary a squirrel can approach our deck undetected right now! Our once green grass is now a carpet of yellow, orange, brown and red.
I used the blower to clear off the deck. 24 hours later it looked like this!
Can you see the carpet of leaves on the lawn?
How could I possibly capture the sound of dry leaves upon dry leaves with only words? How would you say it?
Below is a mighty sweet gum tree growing in the woods of Eastfork State Park.
And then there was this artsy photo of sun through a sweet gum leaf which the mighty beagle messed up by walking in front of the camera.
Silly Lucky, no artistic sense!
You crown the year with Your goodness, And Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, And the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; The valleys also are covered with grain; They shout for joy, they also sing.
We sometimes listen to TED talks. We recently heard “Why Having Fun is The Secret to A Healthier Life,” (link is below). I found the transcript and included a few thoughts from Catherine Price for your consideration. It also touches upon our Small Group study delving into a better definition of joy.
That first photo shows Lucky having fun with Lizzie’s cat while she stayed at their house during our absence.
“The color of fun is sunshine, (said her daughter.) It involves “playfulness, connection and joy.” By playfulness I just mean having a lighthearted attitude of doing things for the sake of doing them and not caring too much about the outcome. Letting go of perfectionism. When we have fun, our guard is down, and we’re not taking ourselves too seriously.
“Connection refers to the feeling of having a special, shared experience. And then flow is the state where we are so engaged and focused on whatever we’re doing that we can even lose track of time.
“The most effective thing you can do to have more fun is to focus on its ingredients, by which I mean, do everything you can to fill your life with more moments of playfulness, connection and flow. So here are some ideas for how to do so. To start with, reduce distractions in order to increase flow. Anything that distracts you is going to kick you out of flow and prevent you from having fun
“And you say “Hello.” And if that goes well, you can introduce yourself. And if that goes well, maybe you can ask them a question, something that’s thought-provoking, but not overly personal or threatening, like “What’s something that fascinates you?” Or “What’s one thing that delighted you today?” And you might be amazed by how good just one little moment of connection can make you feel.
“And if you do find someone to connect with, maybe ask them to join you in trying my third suggestion, which is to increase playfulness by finding opportunities to rebel. Now I am not talking about James Dean-level of rebellion. I’m talking about playful deviance. I’m talking about finding ways to break the rules of responsible adulthood, and giving yourself permission to get a kick out of your own life.
“Make fun a priority. If you know there’s an activity that really does often generate playful connected flow for you, carve out time for it in your schedule. Treat fun as if it is important. Because it is. I’ve been doing this myself for a couple of years now, and it’s amazing to see how many areas of my life fun has touched. I’m more creative and more productive, I’m more resilient. I laugh more. Making sure that I’m having enough fun has made me a better partner, a better parent and a better friend. And it has convinced me of something that I very much hope I can convince you of as well, which is that my daughter was right. Fun is sunshine. It’s a distillation of life’s energy. And the more often we experience it, the more we will feel like we’re actually alive.
Sunshine capture in blossoms!
Yes, a major source of fun for me!
Bob recently had his first cataract surgery. The night before we were in bed saying good night. We both had been a little tense about this as neither of us had experienced it before. Trying to lighten things up a bit I said on the next day I would be asking him “Can you see me now?” Drawing upon his bad joke about Helen Keller I placed his hand on one of my body parts. I was laughing so hard I almost could not say the joke line. “Here, find out if you can see me from memory!” Old folks gotta make fun! “Here, try again, do you see me now?” We were gasping for breath as we laughed and laughed. Sometimes fun is just spontaneous. If it is not spontaneous for you today, follow Catherine’s advice and make some fun.
Great Nephew Levie
We gifted Levie a Teddy Bear when we met him for the first time. I made the Teddy a scarf. Levie fell in love with that Teddy. He had never named one of his stuffed animals before, but decided this one’s name was “Two.” (Levie is also two years old.) He was swinging Two around by the scarf. Occasionally kissing that Teddy. The next day he took Two Bear to Nursery School to teach him how to go down the slide. That is fun!!
Where can you find godly joy, pleasure and delight today? Can you create it in your midst?
You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Growing up I knew little about warfare. In the neighborhood the girls were relegated to being nurses when the boys played battle games. I never got that. I could make sounds with my mouth like guns as well and sometimes better than the boys could!
I understood my Dad had been a Naval flagman in World War 2. I did not understand what he did during the war until years later when I ordered his service records from the Navy. He was disappointed that his poor health kept him out of the Korean War.
Then I came to religion and the life of faith described so often as warfare. The Charismatic movement sometimes went a little overboard seeing a demon behind every bush. At least they were aware that we are under attack. All the time. I believe complacency just gives the demons more ground in our lives. Too much attention to the devil weakens us by distracting us from the power of Jesus Christ our Lord and the strength of the indwelling Holy Spirit, His greatest gift to us.
Hand in hand with my Bible I go to the dictionary for help in understanding.
Skirmish: an episode of irregular or unpremeditated fighting, especially between small or outlying parts of armies or fleets.
Battle:
1. (Military) a fight between large armed forces; military or naval engagement; combat
2. conflict; contention; struggle
3. (Military) do battle give battle join battle to start fighting
Narnia Preparing for Battle Scene
I thought this was well worded truth about the faith life.
Faith is war.
It’s a fight. A battle. Faith is hard. It’s a fight to trust God when you can’t see him. It’s a fight to believe God is in control when all around us screams life has derailed. It’s a battle to thank Jesus that his steadfast love never ceases and his mercies are new every morning in the midst of pain and sadness. It’s a fight to believe Scripture rather than our eyes and circumstances. It’s a fight to forgive and resist bitterness and believe Jesus can change others’ hearts. It’s straining and wrestling to rejoice always. It’s a struggle to believe that in the end, God will work all this out for our good. To believe that Jesus will have the final word. To believe our sufferings are producing an eternal weight of glory. Faith is a fight to believe that following Jesus is better than sin.
Throughout the Bible there are references to battle. Repeatedly. Most of us go on our way as if those references do not relate to us. 2022 is rife with warfare, especially against those who love Christ Jesus. I pray you will live with your eyes wide open to this phenomenon.
When the time rolls around for our small group to meet, Bob and I experience some of this warfare. He and I co-lead the study and suddenly there will be friction between us, conflict all around us, a multitude of things against us distracting us from Jesus.
Have you experienced this sort of oppression from the enemy of your soul? I have found the best weapon against oppression is to recognize what is happening, push back against the darkness, and return to praising the God of heaven and earth. Psalm 22 says God inhabits the praises of His people. Even if the King James version has the translation slightly wrong we can be assured that Lord is with us and through His resurrection power the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We do not need to relinquish ourselves to the enemy in the heat of battle. Read the book of Revelation and you will learn OUR GOD WINS. Colossians 2:14 declares that we have been freed from our sin and shame.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Colossians 2:13-15 NIV
Battles and skirmishes come often to test what we truly believe. I believe the Truth of the Word that declares God wins! Do not be complacent.
In 1975 I thought someone should update the weapons of our warfare with modern day images. Have a person march into the church with riot gear on and other accoutrements of battle. Now in 2022 that person might get shot if the security force of the congregation was not made aware of what the teaching plan entailed. Imagine the weapons however best to encourage you to fight the good fight of faith and not grow complacent or defeated in your faith.
We are seeing that the blue skies and sunshine people in Ohio desire spell disaster when it goes on for way too long. We had a blip of cooler weather where we needed sweatshirts and jackets. Frost killed the most tender plants. I was out there pulling them up and disposing of them. Bob drained and put away our garden hoses so the wintry weather would not ruin them. Now we are back to the 70’s during the day and 50’s at night. Mild and above average temperatures for this time of year. Wishing for those hoses as the chrysanthemums and roses are drying out in the flower beds!
And what of our walk with the Lord? Is yours drying up? Has your walk brought challenges that you would rather ignore? Are you bundled in a blanket of self-pity waiting for some other thing to do, rather than obey? There is a saying that if the devil has not bothered you lately, you likely are not obeying the Lord.
If the enemy is not bothering you then perhaps you are not walking in obedience to Christ. Why would our lazy enemy bother us if we do not need bothering? He likes to steal and kill and destroy. (John 10:10) If there is nothing in your life that is furthering the work of Christ that serpent brushes off his hands and says ‘my work here is done.”
C S. Lewis wrote “The Screwtape Letters” a fantastic story about the demons and how they try to cripple or at least hinder the walk of a Christian. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. If you have read it, perhaps it is time to read it again.
It is gloomy here today and it rained under an inch last night. No drought relief here. Some of the local farmers have not harvested their crops from the field as they fear they cannot ship them with the Mississippi river so low and barges stranded in the channel. What a strange time to be alive. I suppose those that lived through World Wars thought the same thing.
The mail delivery continues. The school bus transports kiddos. Men get haircuts. Women tend to the grocery needs. Through it all are we engaged in the work of Christ?
If your walk is drying up perhaps you better get with it and find ways to drench your soul with His Living Water! We cannot control the weather but we can control whether or not we seek Him and His will for us! If the enemy of our souls bothers you, do what the Word says:
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
{First photo from Unsplash, yoshua girl} Bob and I enjoy finding an author we like who has written an abundance of books. Then we try to work our way through the books in their order of publication. One such author is Louise Penny. The books are usually set in a small town named Three Pines. Inspector Gamache and his fellow Sûreté du Québec officers speak French Canadian phrases which Bob adores and I translate in my own way.
Louise Penny weaves wisdom through her writings. There are 17 books in this series so far. I came across this quote recently and had to share it.
He tried not to go to the worst possible conclusion. That they were down because everyone who might communicate was down.
No. He forced his mind away from that. Stick with the simple facts. He knew how catastrophic a rampant imagination, driven by fear, could be.
How The Light Gets In, Louise Penny
Fear occurs about 1,025 in the Bible and first appears in Genesis 3. Fear has been with us a very long time. Fear not or be not afraid appear many times (unlikely the 365 count is accurate according to most scholars).
Regardless, we are prone to fear, even Louis Penny knows, and we are told not to go there. Fear not, Be not afraid. It is something we have a choice about.
When did you recently force your mind away from the worst possible conclusion? Were you able to take those thoughts captive to Christ Jesus?
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV
This is a discipline that truly takes practice. We must learn not to let ‘awfulizing’ become the way we think. We must turn our thoughts and our ways to His thoughts and ways. You can likely tell by my catching and quoting this from a fictional novel that I have been at this practice for a while. No, I have not mastered it, but like my other spiritual disciplines it does help me grow closer to Jesus.
Well the new computer said I had to restart to install updates. I hit the button and went off to eat breakfast. I really wanted an early start on writing Have had so many interrupted writing days lately. Wanted to get ahead for when we travel next month.
Came back after breakfast and still spinning though it said 100% complete. Started a load of wash. Still spinning. Updated paper journal. Still spinning. By now I was getting aggravated (one of my mom’s favorite words) . Over 45 minutes had passed.
Salvador Dali’s Melting CLock
At Bob’s suggestion asked online what the deal is. Seems Windows 11 is having massive trouble with these updates. Well that does not help me WRITE TODAY!! Turned off computer. When I turned it back on updates started all over. At the moment 63%. So here I am writing on the laptop. Perhaps this is planned practice for when we travel?
“Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht” is an old Yiddish adage meaning, “Man Plans, and God Laughs.” Despite our most careful planning, the Road of Life is unpredictable.
Saul Levine, M.D.
Things will have to be cleaned up on this post for certain! And then updates worked and I am back on the desktop. Yikes. I am not in charge of this blog. Each day I give it over to the Lord. I ask Him to bless the content and the readers, that is you!
We all get frustrated and irritable when things do not go our way. My goal is to shorten the time when this happens and get back to putting my attention upon Jesus as quickly as possible. As Thomas R. Kelly wrote,
Lapses and forgettings are so frequent. When you catch yourself again, lose no time in self-recriminations, but breath a silent prayer for forgiveness and begin again, just where you are.
The Light Within
Would you try that right now? Read the quote above and give yourself a moment to do it. Breath a silent prayer and begin again with Him who loves you best.
Offer this broken worship to Him and say: “This is what I am except Thou aid me.”
The Light Within
I usually pray, “Left to myself I will always mess it up.” Jesus said, “Of myself I can do nothing.” John 5:30a
Help me remember, Lord
As lawn guys go thundering past my window I pray you will keep me focused upon You, Lord God. Help me stay in Your Presence regardless of what the day brings or does not bring. I agree with Kelly, “we are owned men and women.” Have Your own way in and through me. Amen.
I believe one reason we fear silence and stillness is we do not want to know ourselves and what God has to say about us. If we could only trust Him in a small way we would learn that He loves us more than we love ourselves. In fact, He treasures and adores us.
The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing
Zephaniah 3:17 NRSV
Stefan Kunze Upsplash
The writings of Oswald Chambers contained in the book noted below were excerpted from articles published by God’s Bible School in Cincinnati. The articles were taken from his classroom lectures and Bible studies and published in the school’s periodical God’s Revivalist.
What does the Bible mean when it says to be an example to the flock of God? You must be a walking example of what you believe, in every moment of your life, known and unknown. You must bear the scrutiny of God until you prove that you are indeed a specimen of what He can do. Then He will send you out to disciple all nations.
Oswald Chambers, September 18 selection from “Devotions for a Deeper Life”
Every moment known and unknown. Things done in secret. I do not think this refers just to shameful things. Our deepest wounds are often kept private. The healing the Lord may give from those wounds is also usually given in private. The deep formation of a disciple usually takes place in private.
But whenever you pray, enter into your inner room and shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Matthew 6:6 NIV
Your Father who sees in secret. He hears every whisper or shout of a prayer. Your Father knows you inside and out. He will not require that you share with others what He does in your secret place of prayer. There may however, come a time when you want to shout His work from the rooftops.
Matt Hanns Upsplash
Dietrich Bonhoeffer captured my attention writing in The Cost of Discipleship when he emphasized that we each walk alone with God.
Every man is called separately and must follow alone.
Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, Discipleship and the Individual
Many of us admire other Christians but we know little or nothing about what it takes for them to be public Christians. We have no clue what happens between them and the Trinity in private. No idea the depth of their wounds or the strength of the healing times the Lord has sent to them. All most often occur in private.
You interact with your Father in a private place, even if you are kneeling in a sanctuary packed with other people. We can share our experiences with others but we are essentially alone with Christ in our walk. Yes, He encourages fellowship with those who are like minded, but in the final analysis we are each alone with Him. He reads our heart. He corrects our course. He convicts us when we go astray. He gives us His righteousness. He suffered and died for our salvation and for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despised the shame and sat down at the right hand of the Throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2 NRSV)
Public, private, the deepest things occur in a private place with your Holy Trinity God.
Steffany Gretzinger in her song “Forever Amen” sums it up for me. “I was made to love You. Let me hear the sound of Your voice…”
I would strongly encourage you that when you hear the sound of His voice, go running to a quiet place. Listen up! For unlike human parents, the Father does not waste His breath. He speaks to us with power, love, meaning and transformative powers.
Plop us down in one place for a year and suddenly we have things. Stacks of things. Lots of things. Things sitting out that could be put away. How do we accumulate all these things? How often do you pare down the things you have accumulated?
When we first moved into this house we rented a storage unit. We had things we were not certain we needed or should be rid of. Now it is mostly Christmas decorations, (I try to get rid of more every year). We are going to get rid of our storage unit and put our things in with someone else. Why pay for 2 when all the things fit in one unit!
However, that does not cover what is in the house. I have been slowly going through drawers and closets getting rid of things not used in the past year. We have been here for over a year so now is the time!
Are you overrun with things? I find things sometimes distract me from the Lord. The photos in my office remind me of Him and also of good times Bob and I have celebrated.
This lovely statue in Colorado is entitled “You might as well dance!”
And Arches National Park where I spotted the Trinity, or was it the Three Wise men in the shadows?
Regardless, the shadows remind me I am never alone
As I rearrange pots and pans and other things to better locations I am reminded to always fix my eyes upon Him. May you be blessed to do the same! More important than things is seeking His Kingdom.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
During an evening walk with Lucky, when I was way beyond tired, delightfully astonished to find this praying mantis on a neighbor’s car.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4: 4-7 NIV
Present even your fatigue! Keep watching for those treasures in plain sight! Reminders of His care and the glory of His creation.
She is one of my favorite, new-to-me Christian artists. I recently ordered her CD Forever Amen. I admire so many songs on this CD I thought I ought to order it to support her work and have it on all my devices.
On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.
Acts 14:27 NIV
Remember, reflect, think, review, grow. Why do we do this so seldom? As I was pondering this my pastor posted a video blog on the value of reviewing our lives. I used to do that during retreats at the Convent of the Transfiguration. Lately it seems we always schedule travel during those retreat weekends. (sigh)
But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect
1 Peter 3:15
This is a great song about the Lord’s supper adding to the message, remember. He made the altar into a table.
Praying you will take time this week to review, ponder, elevate His works in your recent life. Can you go so far as to make a list for your own use in praise?
Treasures in Plain Sight, A Christian Blog 