Planting a Kiss

The flowers have appeared in the earth, The time of the singing has come...Song of Solomon Chapter 2

A Spicy Moment (with John in mind)

 Looking for a gift for you I went to the spice shop that sells candy-
Garam masala, fennel, lavender infused olive oil and...candy.
If you are comfortable referring to Mexican dark chocolate
with bacon, French white chocolate with blueberries and
German chocolate with cacao nibs as "candy".
They also sell honey from gifted bees- Mensa bees,
working exotic flower fields.
Did I mention the teas brimming over with the magic of
ancient lands and figs and dates?
Open the door and your soul expands in a cocoa,
oolong, madras melange of delight.
I bought you peaches and pecans in milk chocolate.
One bar cost what I earned an hour the first year we were married.
Delicious! D-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s!
But not so fine a delicacy, not so sweet a treat, not so juicy 
as even one of your kisses all spicy magic...and mine.
-kl

Alaska is always north of spring. Alaska is such a hold out hanging on to long winter like a loved one saying good-bye. Those of us living here are shouting out, "GOOD-BYE!" with a garden spade in our hand. Ahhh, but still the snow can't seem to make up its mind even though the geese are flying in and the ravens are flying out.

So we Alaskans get out in the lengthening days and go from store to store just to be outside in the light. I met a friend at the spice shop that has opened a tea room and we enjoyed the day talking about God and poetry over the fragrant steam coming from our cups.

The time of singing is coming. The days of flowers and landscape screaming verse is on the way. The season for planting carrots, zucchini and dahlias is inching closer. I am like a runner in a crouch, toe digging in behind an imaginary line.

Spring is almost here and if it is still too soon to plant a carrot, even if you don't have a green thumb- you can always plant a kiss! 

I did!

Marriage vs Mirage

"Marriage (also called matrimony or wedlock) 

is a social union or legal contract 

between people called spouses." 

This is the Wiki definition. 

I don't think so. 

A marriage requires a man and a woman. 

The other kind is a mirage not a marriage.

As our Supreme Court debates these divisive issues 

may we pray for wisdom and grace 

from the one who really is Supreme,

Who shed His blood for all of us 

without exception and

to whose Marriage Supper

we have been called. 

-Kathy LaMantia

 

 

 

Being Wild Yeast

God, my God, how great you are!
beautifully, gloriously robed,
Dressed up in sunshine,
and all heaven stretched out for your tent.
You built your palace on the ocean deeps,
made a chariot out of clouds and took off on wind-wings.
You commandeered winds as messengers,
appointed fire and flame as ambassadors...
You covered the mountains with deep waters;
Then you roared and the water ran away...  
What a wildly wonderful world, God!
You made it all...
-Psalm 104 Message

There is a blog site I follow full of wonderful bread recipes. More than I like the bread I love the title, Wild Yeast. Tonight while I was looking at how to make sourdough rye the title was working on me. Expanding something. Raising glory.

Wild Yeast! Isn't that the very thing Christ intended us to be? The Kingdom of the Heavens," He said, "is like yeast which a woman takes and buries in a bushel of flour, for it to work there till the whole mass has risen." Matthew 13:33 WNT

The plan of Creation was a wild ride. Overflowing with wonderfulness per the above Psalm. The plan of salvation was so out of the mainstream the world never saw it coming, at least never saw the form of its coming, in spite of all the prophecy pointing the way.

God and "box" are polar opposites. A world made of thoughts, men made of dust, a God who dies? The wild-heartedness of the Living God! The only sound in the room is the intake of my breath.

Wild Yeast! Why do I often settle for a lesser, more easily managed God? Why am I tamed by the world that thought it could tame Him? We should expect more. Be more. Be more WILD! Be more open to wildness.

I am so easily satisfied by the call of lovers so less wild.-Derek Webb

Could we be done with that? Safe love. Could we replace it with the wildness of a God who loves us like a crack of thunder and who has made us a flame of fire? The God who has made us the light and salt and leaven for a world hungry for bread that satisfies more than just physical hunger?

Could we be wild?

How wild?

Wild enough to love the world into a saving knowledge of Christ no matter how He chooses to use us?

Wild enough to believe for anything?

Wild enough to hope for everything?

Wild enough to say, "Yes!" before the question has been asked?

Wild enough to raise glory?

Could we be Heaven's Wild Yeast?

Could we?

kl

Storm-surge

I posted yesterday about how after the storm comes a "hallelujah" and I had in mind how after Calvary's midday darkness Easter moves center stage. I also considered that after we are pressed by any number of difficulties, God manifests.

My friend, Kim @ Ambushed By God, had written about God actually being like a storm and that made me think of the pillar of fire that dared Egypt to advance on His beloved Hebrews escaping slavery and heading toward the Promise.

Calvary, like so many other Bible moments, was a storm. It was a super-storm that did not just change geography (earthquake) but it altered destiny. It took doomed humanity to a place of redemption and on through to Resurrection morning.

It took the Son of God wearing our skin to lead us through the sea and up the hill while the winds blew and the ground shook. Then a shattering stillness in the storm's eye before an earth-shaking, chain-breaking, Resurrection.

Looking toward Easter in this Lenten moment let us look at that Love-Storm that is Jesus and embrace Him with gratitude for the Storm-surge that has overtaken our history and covered it with deep seas.

Resurrection is coming.

I offer these links that may speak to you this week:

http://daily.upperroom.org/?p=2659

http://rayofsonlight.blogspot.com/2013/03/keeping-our-boat-afloat-ray-of-sonlight.html

http://ambushedbygod.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-god-is-storm.html

http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2010/02/storm-of-love.html

http://www.leslieleylandfields.com/2012/06/wallenda-prayer-walk-another-eaglet-and.html

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0849945488/qid=1100997545/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6?v=glance&s=books

Blessings.

(Painting of the pillar of fire by William West)

Just had an earthquake for real as I was hitting publish @ 1:06 pm Alaska time

After The Storm Comes The Hallelujah

On this long storm the Rainbow rose –Dickinson

This brief chapter of the story is drawing to a close. Soon He will be parted from them, these ones who have left nets and tax tables to sleep in fields and pick breakfast from the stalk to be with Him.

A storm is coming that will expose fear and cowardice. A storm is coming that will uncover treachery and betrayal. A storm is coming that will blow the house down.  

The Cross is coming.

As we look toward this Easter season we have the advantage of a historical perspective the first followers of Jesus lacked. We have read the to the end of the story, the end of their earthly story anyway. We know the house is rebuilt. Easter morning came.

It is all the Good Fridays we personally face that challenge us. Those times can easily find us in hiding, tremblingly ill at ease and halting in our profession of faith, uncertain about the personal cost of claiming Jesus.

Easter is coming.

Whatever needs to pass away, shall, that the joy of that new day can be found. We are never left empty. The tomb's destiny is to be robbed. The enemy's hand's are left holding the air. We have the life Christ paid for. A Hallelujah. 

He will be found of us even to the end of the age. He promised. After the storm comes the Hallelujah and for a few brave souls it may even be shouted back into the driving winds. Whatever comes we will not be left empty.

Hallelujah!

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.        -1 Peter 1:3 

(September 2012 windstorm in Anchorage, Alaska that brought four fifty foot trees down upon our house in the dark.)


 
       
       
           
           
       

Treasuring God's Word

I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.-Job 23:12

Once during a long fast I discovered the meaning of this scripture. I ate nothing but I devoured the Word and I thrived.

This is not a post about fasting even though it is in the middle of Lent. It is about treasuring. It is about how precious the Word of God is and how necessary it is to life and joy.

The word used for "treasured" is the same word used to save up or to hide, even to hoard. Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11 is one example. It is what married women used to do with their dowries, being the only treasure truly theirs; hence the desperate search for the lost coin and the joy over its discovery in the parable Jesus taught.

Something precious, hidden, saved in a secure place, insurance against a day of need; something particularly one's own, necessary to one's well being, special, a cause for celebration.

I thought back over my life and I could not recall one celebratory event that did not intimately involve God and His Word. Not one. Not even the ordinary, everyday ones. How often His Word brought hope, confirmed a promise, revealed truth, provided courage, announced a miracle. Start to finish my life is bound up with the words of His lips and that word will still be nourishing me when the last crumb of worldly wisdom fails.

It is out of this treasure house hidden inside of me that ministry flows and feeds others. Equally so, I am fed of others from the their stores. How often I have "borrowed" a cup of sugar from a friend who seeing my need, poured in to replenish me.

Spend some time treasuring God's Word in this season and prepare for a celebration. He has provided His goodness for your way.

The mandrakes give off a fragrance, and at our door are all kinds of precious fruits. I have saved  (treasured) new and old things for you alone, my beloved.-Songs 7:13

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He Loves Me. He Loves Me.

The mountains and hills may crumble, but my love for you will never end, so says the Lord who loves you. Isaiah 54:10 (TEV)

How does He do it? How does He love us anyway? For some of us that anyway, that in-spite-of, can be unimaginable when viewed along side of our sin.

If I turned in a paper as my own but "borrowed" someone else's work from the Internet, I can see how God might be disappointed in me but still manage to care for me in-spite-of myself. If I got so upset with my child that I put a hot iron against his face where is His affection? Where is redemption?

Remember, we are the ones whose life is a vapor, whose days are grass. Not so with God. He is eternal and substantial and He loves from the same stuff He is made of so we might as well just give up trying to understand it and accept it. The hills may come to dust. The unthinkable in life may happen. His love is still standing when the dust clears.

If His love is unshakable, immovable; if it won't blush, won't run- then maybe we can trust it. Maybe this Lenten season of self examination we can unclothe our secret selves and stand naked in His presence and survive.

Love is the covering that lets grace do its work.

What needs to be stripped away, washed away, finished? What needs to be laid down, set aside, buried in an unmarked grave? What thoughts need to be captured?

The One whose love is made out of the same stuff as Eternity is looking right at you and He isn't walking away. There is no "He loves me not" spoken over any daisy in Heaven.-kl

"Forgive me my sins, O Lord; forgive me the sins of my youth and the sins of my age, the sins of my soul and the sins of my body, my secret and my whispering sins, the sins I have done to please myself and the sins I have done to please others. Forgive those sins which I know, and the sins which I know not; forgive them, O Lord, forgive them all because of your great goodness and the sacrifice of Christ."  Beliefnet

“Sometimes, O God, my thirst for you is pushed aside, ignored, or simply quenched by something other—something reasonable, something more popular—than you. But you never go away, never stop, never leave the depths of me. Like an underground spring, you are fresh and free, breaking through. Help me prepare a place for you in the caverns of my soul. Amen.”

- Pamela Hawkins, The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent