Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Moving!

No, no...although I've made a career out of moving around this fine country of ours, my blog is the only thing moving these days.

Come check it out:
http://soulstretchesandsteps.wordpress.com/

If you'd like to review old posts, rest assured they are on the new page. Also, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my blog more in the future!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Once Foggy

*Play this while your read:



The fog is lifting and the light of the morning sun is slowly burning away the density of the sadness that has kept me from seeing. Seeing and the need to be seen has been stunted by the thickness of the clouds that had settled around my soul for too long. Another winter season, another fog-laden soul search, another journey of truth seeking and truth telling. From an idea Jill Briscoe so eloquently coined, the steps of my soul have been perched upon for a great deal of important time and God has seen it fit to stretch out the sides. My legs sat still, keeping me from putting one foot in front of the other.


It was the year the locusts came, to snatch whatever morsels of joy, peace, or significance I might have felt. They left my heart's field for want of a truth seed sower and preacher of proper nourishment. Each remaining stubble of grass stood alone, clinging in perseverance to the sparse drops of truth water, sucking the necessary moisture, one measly drop at a time. In the darkness it seemed impossible that life was surviving, let along growing, as the clouds and surrounding fog settled in a little deeper. I prayed for mercy, trust, strength, and truth. I prayed for hope.

As the sun is rising to brilliance once again, reality is declaring there has been a farmer to my soul's field all along. He has not been asleep or wasting away the day while the fog had it's way. He's been lingering just on the other side of my foggy sight-line, offering those significant drops of truth water, occasionally placing a new seed of His grace and mercy amidst the sparse blades of grass still standing. His voice called out the locusts and their lies, though in the muted movement of the wind and in unrecognizable tones. He asked me to learn to recognize His voice in ways I had not before. He was offering rest under the blanket of the fog, if only I let go. Surrendering just seemed so hard despite its necessity.


The verse I hear as the sun and moon come in clearly once more is lifted by the clouds and rains new life on my soul's field. First starting in a whisper, massaging my heart from self-condemnation to grace in Christ. It is beginning to grow louder, can you hear it? It is meant to consume. "What can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus."

Jesus and I have played hide and seek in that intensely deep fog. But the redemption and the grace received have thus far been worth it. If Christ is Lord, as I believe Him to be, it has been a journey to remember whom is on the throne and to live in the inheritance I have as the beloved.

Romans 8:1
So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

John 4:14
But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”

Mark 8:35
If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.

1 Corinthians 8:6
But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we live for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been give life.