Desire

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire. Thomas Merton
Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. Isaiah 26:8 (NIV)

Listen to Isaiah 26 in The Message:

...Throw wide the gates
so good and true people can enter.
People with their minds set on you,
you keep completely whole,
Steady on their feet,
because they keep at it and don't quit.
Depend on God and keep at it
because in the Lord God you have a sure thing.
Those who lived high and mighty
he knocked off their high horse...
All the exploited and outcast peoples
build their lives on the reclaimed land.

The path of right-living people is level.
The Leveler evens the road for the right-living.
We're in no hurry, God. We're content to linger
in the path sign-posted with your decisions.
Who you are and what you've done
are all we'll ever want.
Through the night my soul longs for you.
Deep from within me my spirit reaches out to you...

I have never cultivated a taste for coffee. I am, however, a great lover of Diet Coke. A local convenience store (Holiday) tempts me with 44 oz of it for 99 cents. This morning on my way in to the watering hole I saw a woman reading a book with a captivating title, Silence on Fire, and I asked her about it. It is based upon the writings of Thomas Merton.

We spoke and she shared with me that she is reading it as part of her 12 Step program and what followed was a few minutes of sharing as she waited for her ride to a meeting. She is determined and pursuing a better path. She has chosen her Master.

Today I found myself telling Jesus again, "You are my choice. You are all I will ever want." I remembered how He said to His friends, "I have earnestly (with passionate longing) desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." His desire was so keenly focused upon them, upon us, as he revealed in the flesh the Savior who had been concealed in all the generations of Seders past.

Christ's heart and strength were purposefully directed towards us and our redemption. That purpose, sharpened knife-edged and unforgiving of His divinity, dictated that He would die in our place with the full weight of His obedience bringing down the hammer of God's vengeance upon the nails. (Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, he devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from him. 2 Samuel 14:14) "Not my will...but Yours."

It remains His passion to eat with us. To share the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in His Father's Kingdom with those forgiven ones whose desire is to live for Him. If Merton is right then our lives will be shaped by that desire every bit as much as was Christ's.

The end is love with reclaimed people living on reclaimed land.

The Desired Ones.

Us.

Kat with John



Dedicated to the woman at the Holiday. May Christ continue to order all your "Steps." Thanks for sharing.

The Bird

Tiny claws grasp fir needles.
Hungry beak searches for small fruits
among fragrant green points.

Wild vines twist and twine
among the branches,
a current heavy banquet.

What is she to me?
Yellow-tipped, fawn feathers
casting about, alert for food or danger.

I am not even as good as a purple berry to her
but she delays flight
as I step imperceptibly closer.

Do you feel the Garden, Little Sister?
Light but a moment upon my coat
and Eden lives.

Let me hold you warm in cupped hands
feel soft wing to cheek
and two worlds become concrescent.

When berries fail Providence provides,
as I will hide your form in my winter heart
to nibble through to Spring.

kl

"Ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;
let the birds tell you what's going on.
Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.
Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.
Isn't it clear that they all know and agree
that God is sovereign? That He holds all things in His hand—
Every living soul, yes, every breathing creature." Job 12:7-10



To John, my bird lover, the only man whose hand has ever covered mine, in celebration of a wonderful Fall day spent in the company of the God of all things.

Summer Treasure

Life once clung to
her pearly ceramic spiral,
wrapping itself round
and around inside her,
in salty emerald water.
But no more.
All is quiet now
on the ocean floor.
Sunlight filters down,
waves above run to shore
and return.
She is in the shallows now,
the sandy bottom holds her
in suspense,
pink insides upturned,
waiting hence.
A splash, a laugh, a hand,
waiving her head high
above damp yellow curls
-for joy.
"A beauty!" says the boy.
Cradled to his ear
she releases her memories
of waves and tides
and ancient seas-
the boy is pleased
to hear.
In the curl
of his brown arm
she fills him
with her salty smell.
All is well, all is well
in the love affair
of boy and shell.

kl

In celebration of the Jersey Shore summer of John Sebastian who knows God's Creation as his playground and God's Heart as his own.




The mercy of God is an ocean divine,
A boundless and fathomless flood.
Launch out in the deep, cut away the shore line,
And be lost in the fullness of God.
A. B. Simpson

To Sherry Standing

Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down
lift your heart toward heaven
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting
your heart toward heaven — only you.












It is in the middle of misery that
so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good came of this,
is not yet listening.

A prayer by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

I read this tonight and thought of my sister, Sherry, recovering from a motorcycle accident. Faith in a walker is still faith and recovery is a process of baby steps taken by that same faith.

Keep listening, Sher. His goodness is knitting you back together.

Bring joy to your servant for to you I lift up my soul. Psalms 86:4

But God...

Once upon a time my only child looked over the rim of Hell and singed off his eyebrows but it was my heart the smell of burnt hair clung to.

"But God..."


What an amazing phrase. Interjecting possibilities and safety and restoration into the most desperate of situations. I was smashed to bits, wandering in a desert, praying through cracked lips...but God! He was sending grace ahead into my future and planning a homecoming when my own hand was too tired to make the Welcome Home banner.

Even as my son was fasting from virtue and every solidly life giving thing we had ever lived before him, Christ was setting a place at the table.

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway...But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. (Romans 5 The Message)

I rejoice to say the fatted calf was eaten years ago and now my son lives by God's grace to teach his own son of the sure mercies of our Father. God heard me and rescued my son. He answered my prayers and honored my fasts.

If you are a parent in need of a miracle, Jesus offers Himself as that miracle. He will not fail you. He will not dismiss your tears. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10)

Christ has a special blessing for such Extreme Motherhood*: The child that was dead is returned to life.

If I wrote this for you, hold fast to a hope. God is good for it.

My own gratitude is daily and absolute.

-Kat


* My Bible Study and Encouragement for mother's of difficult children.

As Your Hands Do

Artist's Prayer by Marcy Tilton

(Holy)Spirit, grant me:
The vision and wisdom of the elder she-eagle
The fierce focus of the lioness
The fluid leadership of wild geese
Small creatures’ ways of stillness
Beaver’s strong and beautiful cozy lodge
The devotion of a dearly beloved loyal dog.

Fill my spirit with the wild abandon-infused
winds of autumn that keep positive and
negative space moving and changing,
charged and clear.
Fill my inner circle with Beloved in the
form of lover, partner, true friends, family,
truth and laughter.

May my work reflect the light and the
shadows that are my being.
May I have clarity.
May I know when and where to begin and
when and how to stop.
May I always have the strength to ask the
hard question,
to peer deeply into the dark pools,
the patience to wait for sediment to clear.


This gem of a prayer was in a devotional I was reading today.
She had me with her desire to be filled with the "wild abandon-infused winds of autumn that keep positive and negative space moving and changing, charged and clear." I stretched up on tiptoes inside and inhaled that one, letting it fill every unused musty corner of me.

Lord, breathe upon brushes, fill inkpots, sharpen pencils; light bright fires between brain cells, call to thoughts and intentions, speak to the dough in the pan, mortar the spices. Let something of beauty come out...let it come out of us!

Let us have faith in our giftedness, the manifestation of Your own creative ability straining against what is common. Let us see clearly, hear the melody and tie on our tap shoes! Let it all be for you and through you by our free hands and hearts and wills. Love and art as you first saw it, uncorrupted and glad-faced. Art in story or clay, paint or pasta, in colored paper draped for birthdays and cards homemade and fragrant. Guitar strings calling. Flutes answering. Art for sale or art for-keeps. Your breath on embers, our heats on fire, offering.

Wild-hearted gifts. Gifts from quiet places. Gifts that render this world transparent. (Some of us have the Sistine Chapel to lay at His feet. Others the love of showing a child how to draw a stem on a flower. It is great love that determines the value. There is not a one of us ungifted.) May our hands do as Your hands do that this world may know the beauty we live in You.

The heavens are sounding the glory of God; the arch of the sky makes clear the work of his hands. Psalm 19:1


What is the inspiration infused Holy-Wind showing you?




http://internetcafedevotions.com/

Today

TODAY-Mend a quarrel. Search out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed.

TODAY-Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more.

TODAY-Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child.Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love.Speak it again. Speak it still again. Speak it still once again.

Author Unknown

Speak.

There is a line of scripture the describes the Proverbs 31 woman that became an instant favorite of mine:

She opens her mouth with wisdom,
And on her tongue is the law of kindness. (v. 26)

The Law of Kindness. What a delightful thought. What a needed reality. You only have to stand in line at the grocery or the bank or overhear someone's cell conversation or their biting remarks to their children in a store to be assaulted with course, thoughtless, unkind speech. Our society suffers from an appalling lack of manners let alone kindness.

We all have to look in the mirror on this one at one time or another. I surely do. The Irish have an expression that describes me sometimes, "A tongue that can clip a hedge."

I looked up the the kindness scripture in Hebrew and found that one of the words for kindness can also mean favor. I found myself asking the Lord to cause me to so speak that all who listen would be aware of God's favor upon my life and even more so would enjoy His favor as a direct result of my words spoken to them or overheard.

"Forgo a grudge...express gratitude...speak your love...speak it again."

(The clerk at Wal-Mart isn't the only one listening.)

Favor someone TODAY.