GRACE FLAKES

Your grace falls softly like snowflakes…gently…uniquely. 
Collectively the crystals gather, illuminating our
darkness even in the night when we crave your presence
or forget you are as near to us as you are.
                  
We watch flakes grow smaller then big again and sense the wooing to calm our spirits, to rest in this blanket of love, to accept the miracle of nourishment, both to earth and our inner soil and soul.


As more flakes grow into tall mounds of white help us remember we are safe,
That snow angels encamp about us outside. Continue to protect us as we trust you to be our refuge in times of trouble and stress.

 Let us feel the soft feathers of your winged love regardless of cold, flood and angst. Remind us that stilling ourselves in you brings peace that passes understanding

My Psalm 23 Prayer

By Tawna Wilkinson

                                   

Ten years ago, during a very dark night in my life, Psalm 23 came to me in a breathtaking shaft of light. The truth is that “common” scripture I memorized as a child, and heard over and over, literally saved my life in those moments of terror. It gifted me with a strange peace I was extremely thankful for.

A few weeks back, a circumstance presented itself – just one more, in a long line of challenges since the death of my dad 15 months past. I had a bout with appendicitis. Although the intensity of the experience was not nearly as dramatic as my “dark night”, or the death of my dad…. it was tough.

And on one particular night while still in the hospital, I hit a point of deep discouragement. And the Lord brought me back to Psalm 23 in an intriguing form of encouragement. He invited me to say it to Him, in my own words, as a prayer of thanksgiving; as if my life was already complete.

This is what I prayed:

“You Lord, were always my Shepherd. Throughout my life You caused me to lie down, repeatedly in soft, green pastures. You led me beside peaceful, still waters. And You lovingly and gently stored, and re-stored my soul.

Papa, all of my life You led me in Your sweet paths of  righteousness, for the sake of Your holy and beautiful name.

Even though I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I have feared absolutely nothing, because You are still with me.

Your rod and Your staff, although hard, comforted me many times. As I knew that those whom You love You discipline.

More than once You laid out a feasting table for me to sit at in the very presence of the enemy of my soul. 

Over and over, You abundantly anointed my head with oil; my cup overflowed.

Surely goodness and mercy did more than follow me all the days of my earthly life. I not only lived on this earth in Your presence. But am now living in it with You, forever.”

The comfort I was absorbed in as I chose each word was profound. To thankfully pray my version of Psalm 23 to Him as if I had actually entered eternity gifted me with another breathtaking shaft of light. He shed peace on my past, recent past and future. And He filled me once again, with a quiet calm regarding my present situation.

When All Is Quiet

By Tiffany Bleger

When all is quiet

Where do you go?

When His voice isn't clear

Where do you run?

Do you charge ahead

Determined in your path?

Do you stand stock still

And wait for the whisper?

Do you turn and run

Back to the familiar?

Do you wander in circles

Moving but going no where?

When all is quiet

Where do you go?

When His voice isn't clear

Where do you run?

Do you lean on your friends 

For an encouraging word?

Maybe listen a little harder

To Sunday's sermon?

Do you beg and plead

And beat your head?

Do you make promises 

You know you won't keep?

When all is quiet

Where do you go?

When His voice isn't clear

Where do you run?

Do you pick up your bible 

And blow off the dust?

Do you listen to music

You think He would love?

Or do you trust and wait

And remember His promises?

Do you know Him well enough

To be still in the quiet?

When all is quiet

Where do you go?

When His voice isn't clear

Where do you run?

Hopelessness

What is "Hope?"

Merrimam-Webster.com defines hope as the action of a person "to cherish a desire with anticipation" and "to expect with confidence."  

I hope today is filled with peace. I hope my children enjoy their birthdays. I anticipate the sun will rise. I have great confidence that my heart will continue beating.   

Yet there have been times when all hope was gone. I have known depression. I know what it means to not be able to get out of bed because the weight of your soul defies human strength. I know what it is to hide in the closet and embrace the darkness because it matches your emotional state. To walk in a daze, going through the motions of caring for others because they need you. No joy. No pleasure. 

Perhaps "Hopelessness" is merely a synonym for "Depression."   

I've been in a car and thought that others would be better off if I just kept driving - their life we would be better without my brokenness.
I've seen the pain in my husbands eyes as he loved me so deeply and yet
couldn't reach me in my darkness. 

Yes, even thoughts of suicide -- just to make the pain stop. 

In these times of darkness I had no hope that the physical pain would end; that the emotional pain would be healed; that the spiritual pain could be redeemed. I had no expectation that my future would be any better than the hopelessness I felt at that moment.

One spring day, I simply could no longer function. I called my dad to please come get my children for the afternoon. I couldn't take care of them. All I could manage was packing them up, calling my daddy and laying on the bed. 

I was desperate. 

God likes desperate. 

Desperate takes away alternates and leaves only God. 

My soul sighed, "God I cannot live like this. Please remove this from me."

A simple cry from my soul. 

In the next moment the hand of God reached down to me, taking the hopelessness and depression between His pinched fingers and pulling the web that had cocooned me. I physically felt it drawn from my head and toes, my shoulders and knees and leaving me!  

I was free. 

I lay there as tears of release rolled down my cheeks and I fell into a restful sleep. 

And awoke in Hope. 

There have been times that this hopelessness has threatened to return. I look at the suffering around me and wonder if God has a plan. Days my body hurts and I don't know how I'm going to even get dressed and wonder why God doesn't heal me. Moments I grieve over lost relationships and question if God sees the pain.  

Then I remember the day hope returned. I stop looking inward at my pain and grief. I stop looking around at man-made situations. Then I do the impossible - I allow those questions and pain and loss and grief to drive me to the Cross.

                                 

I go to "Jesus, our Hope," (1 Timothy 1:1). 

I know that, "He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed," (Deut. 31:8).

God promises me that, "I will be with you when you pass through waters; and when you pass through the rivers - you will not be overwhelmed. You will not be scorched when you walk through the fire, and the flames won't burn you,"(Isaiah 43:2). 

Patiently I obey God who tells me that I must "Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in Him," (Psalm 62:5). 

Today may be tough but I know that "Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off," (Proverbs 23:18). 

I am not forgotten but I am blessed because I am a woman "who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord," (Jeremiah 17:7).

And in the darkest night, my longest day "I will hope continually and will praise Him more and more" (Psalm 71:14).

I wait for Him, cherishing His promises that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him," (Romans 8:28) and that God's plans for me are "for peace and not disaster" and gives me "a future filled with hope!" (Jeremiah 29:11 NOG).  

Our Hope is not in this temporary life. It is not in our human strength, our perceived power, our prayers or in our Faith. 

Our Hope - our cherished desire that we wait for with great anticipation - is eternity with God through the salvation we have in Christ Jesus, the comfort we are given through the Holy Spirit and the restored relationship we have with the Father.

And this Hope changes everything.

Writing Songs, Taking Selah

By Esther Belin

I have been reading through the Psalms the last few days, paying special attention to chapters I normally gloss over – like Psalm 3. This psalm is labeled as “A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom.”  (For more about that conflict see 2 Samuel, chapters 15-18.) This notation sets a virulent tone – one of sorrow, tragedy, and confusion. David, the one known as a man after God’s own heart, fully exercises all his emotions in song!

I love how God uses songs as a way to dialogue with Him. Knowing that these psalms incorporate Hebrew poetry and structure makes me so curious to study them in Hebrew – especially because I am appreciative of writing as an art. But I am more appreciative of David as a servant of the Most High God. I wonder at the dialogue between him and God. When God asked David to write about this painful and lonely time, what was David’s reaction? Did he agree readily? Or did an emotional tornado wrench at his body and soul at the thought of reliving that time? 

I appreciate that David not only obeyed God, but that his retelling of this painful time does so in music and poem. Beauty from ashes. When I am in the middle of a painful situation – and I don’t even want to pray (or know what to pray), I can always trust that reading through the psalms gives me hope. I thank our loving Father God that He wants us to be emotionally healthy – God expects us to feel and He also wants us to write our own song of beauty from ashes.  He wants us to be consumed by Him – to refine, to reposition, to rejoice! Crazy hard, but doable (Romans 12:12 ESV).  

Additionally, three instances of Selah are included in this short psalm. Selah generally infers a pause – a rest to take in God’s presence, a meditation.

I love this intentional call for a pause. In this particular psalm, I imagine the Selah as a time to fully cry unto God or fully praise God – either way, a true pouring out of self. I can totally visualize David doing both.   

The verse that comforts me the most is verse 5:

“I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.” When we “cry aloud” to God, He answers us “from his holy hill” that we may “lie down and sleep.” 

God wants to give us rest! He knows the pressures we are under. He not only knows, He sees and hears. Such love. 

The second half compounds on God’s love: He sustains us. Because of all the emotional weight David was bearing I believe the only reason David was able to awaken again is because he poured himself out to God the day before – in tears and in praises.

This is such a good practice. I easily get filled with the weighty yucky stuff of this world – and I am regularly finding out how easy it can be to let God carry my burdens by crying out and by praising Him. The more I take time to Selah and understand God’s love for me, the more obediently I pour out myself to Him. I want to be sustained. I want restful sleep.

At times, I also want revenge for my pain. Verses 6,7 truly speak to that emotion. David embraces God’s command to not fear. Great assurance. I do love the zeal of verse 7. David cheers God on to arise, deliver him, strike his enemies in the jaw, and break their teeth! Great deliverance. David is a wonderful representation of how to lament, express, and seek God. This short psalm literally packs a punch – and I always feel good after reading it. Great relief. 

We are God’s children and He will defend. We are God’s creation and He will strengthen our skills to sing a new song (Ps. 33:3 NKJV). 

Dear Readers, my challenge to you is to write out your song. Song of Lament. Song of Praise. Song of Deliverance. Seek inspiration from David and strength from our Sovereign God. Allow our Almighty, Compassionate Lord and Savior to awaken your heart strings. And please share it – so we can rejoice or weep along with you (Romans 12:15).  

Be a Tree

By Tawna Wilkinson 

 

One morning, late in spring, during a very dark period in my life, I was blankly staring at an apple tree just outside my dining room window. The morning sun had just peeked over the mountain and was glistening on, and rustling, the leaves. 

But I wasn’t focused on the tree, or the beauty of the morning, as much as I was fixed on a raw, painful thought: What does a person have to do in order for transformation of the heart to actually take place?

A couple of months prior, I had been on staff as the children’s pastor at the church I was attending. I loved the children and the ministry, and was zealous and passionate; working many long hours in order to bring about the vision God had given me. In fact, that was the story of my life, in and out of church, as long as I could remember. 

My family of origin’s motto was work hard and do a hundred percent at all times, carrying with it the connotation that hard work brought about one’s value. The denomination I grew up in taught that if Jesus had really transformed your heart you would do, do, and do for Him, because that’s what loving Jesus looked like. 

And I did love Jesus. I had come to Him at a young age, and wanted very much to please Him.  So, my modus operandii was full throttle, no matter what, especially when the kingdom of God was involved.

But deep below the surface of my hardworking zeal was a yawning, cavernous void I kept trying to fill with all the activity. I was desperately trying to muster a sense of worth. I had no idea I already had value…intrinsic value, simply because God loved me and created me; that my worth had never been contingent upon any activity; and that transformation of my heart was a simple, yet extravagant transaction: God sending His love to me, and me receiving it. 

So, I stayed with what I knew until I burned out and drove the ministry in the ground.

Needless to say, the next months were spent in a counselor’s office unearthing all kinds of ugly, pain, confusion and disillusionment, while wrestling with the belief that I did have value, and learning how to love myself enough to receive the love He was sending right where I was at.

So that morning, pensive with the question and vacantly staring at the apple tree, God spoke out of the quietness: “What does a tree have to ‘do’ in order that photosynthesis takes place?”

“What?”

“What does a tree have to ‘do’ in order that photosynthesis takes place?”

Refocusing my gaze on the sun rustling the tree’s leaves, I intelligently replied:

“Uh…receive light?”

“Exactly.”

Boom.  I knew I had heard.  My mind and spirit were racing with the information welling up in me.

Photosynthesis:  “The process by which chlorophyll-containing cells in green plants convert incident light to chemical energy and synthesize organic compounds from inorganic compounds, especially carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water with the simultaneous release of oxygen.”  (The American Heritage Dictionary)

Bam.  Photosynthesis: The miraculous process that transforms the light the apple tree’s leaves receive into food energy, instigating internal assimilation, and vitality throughout its system, and then, as a mere consequence, releases oxygen into the atmosphere.

In other words, life happens inside the apple before life emerges from it.  And the only thing it has to “do” for that to take place, is receive light through the chlorophyll-containing cells in its leaves.

He spoke, again.

“Simply be a tree, Tawna.”

In that instant, I realized my value was innate, simply because Love loved and created me. And that all the activity I would I ever need to “do” in order that genuine transformation of my heart take place was simply receive Light through my “chlorophyll-containing leaves”… my love-designed, heart, mind and soul.  Then He would miraculously do the “doing” in me…as well as outside of me.

So, my encouragement to you?  Be a tree.

God's Beautiful Reminders

The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. (Psalms 19:1 NLT)

 

Everywhere you look it's beautiful, white, clean, pure, still, calm....

Trees take on new shapes. Their bark contrasts so vividly against the brilliant white snow that outlines their delicate branches. 

If you go outside you may notice the quiet that comes with the stillness of the snow. It muffles sounds so it seems even quieter! It's a gentle, peaceful, soothing quiet.

Much like the Creator of the snow. He comes and blankets us with His righteousness. Covering us with His sacrifice, we look pure and beautiful. 

His Presence brings a gentle, peaceful calm. A stillness unmatched by anything this world can offer. We look different. We feel different. We are different. All because our Savior comes and makes us new.  

And then He reminds us of this through the physical world He's placed us in. Truly the heavens declare the works of His hands.