and the color green
that fills these fields with praise"
Lord, I join the color green's song. Fill me with praise for You.
Photos: taken walking our winter wheat fields...
Thank you, kind Amy, for sharing this song and praise ...
Lord, today cause us to runneth over with the glorious gospel of You who blesses, blesses, blesses. You fill to overflowing. Do we spill Joy?
Related: Spilling God
“Endure hardship as discipline;…(my gallstones have certainly been a hardship)…..God is treating you as sons…For what son is not disciplined by his father?...God disciplines us for our good… No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." Hebrews 12:7a, 10b, 11
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose.” (Ro. 8:28)
The Gratitude Community Blogroll has been happily updated. (If I've missed your link, my apologies. Drop me a line, gracious friend, and I'll get it fixed...) Take a moment and go visiting. God is close, gracious, and good... even in the midst...
Prayerfully consider joining us in thanksgiving -- online or simply in a personal journal... I am humbled to walk this way with each of you. My thanks.
Photos: little bouquets picked by growing boys...
"Great things are they that you have done, O Lord my God!
How great your wonders and your plans for us!
There is none who can be compared with you.
Oh, that I could make them known and tell them!
But they are more than I can count."
~Ps. 40:5-6
Father God, do I live believing that Your gifts are endless, countless? Wake me up today to see.
Children wrapped in picnic blanket and sunset on front lawn,
laying back into words and imagination and a good day dimming...
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever.
Flaking sweet in sunlight's warmth,
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever.
A humble hymns of common graces. Plain Praise. Today we slow to see, sing, a simple Saturday Psalm.
We give thanks, Father. You are good. Your love endures forever.
~~
May we invite you to join the Gratitude Community?
Have you considered establishing gratitude as a personal soul fixture? Just grab a scrap of paper lying around and begin counting the blessings, with your own 1000 Endless Gifts:
Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add you either simply your name or a web link to the "1000 Endless Gifts" blogroll in the sidebar-- we invite you to join the Gratitude Community!)
Spheres on stilts perforate the lawn, these dandelions propped feasting planets for sun-grazed feathers.
I watch from window, goldfinches flashing gold about the whitened old globes.
And He who choreographs these explosions, soft and soundless, winds time, just until the end, to transform a weed universe, bitter and unwanted orbs, into a galaxy of seeds. Nourishment. A banquet.
Fuel for the soaring ones.
Lord, cause me to trust You. To transform the weeds in my life into seeds for my soul, fuel to soar Home.
Related: Making Dandelion Wine
Video of goldfinch eating dandelion seeds
(More on education later today)
Photo: jpmatth
Scenes blast my memoryscape and I reel.
“And, if there really is Anybody up there, They sure were asleep at the wheel that day.” I don’t say anything, that lump in my throat a glowing, burning ember. I just stroke hair, soothing pain. He finds more feelings, stuffs them into words.
“Why let a beautiful little girl die such a senseless, needless death? And she didn’t just die, like your mother always says. She was killed.”
That word twists his face. His eyes remain closed, but he’s shaking his head now, remembering all there was to say no to that hideous November afternoon that branded our lives.
Dad didn’t need more words. That shake of the head said it all. No. No benevolent Being, no grace, no meaning to it all. He rarely had said all that, only sometimes, when he’d close his eyes and ask me to stroke away the day. But these aren’t things you need to say anyways. Like all beliefs, you simply live them. We did.
No, God. No God.
The air our family breathed, this oxygen of negativity, it wasn’t ours alone. It is our human inheritance, the Garden’s legacy. It’s the bedrock of all sin, this ingratitude of Adam and Eve. The rest of the garden wasn’t enough.
When God said humanity was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God ripped away what we wanted. He stole what we considered rightly ours. He snatched away what we deemed ultimately necessary for our happiness and wholeness. Don’t we keep reliving the Garden, again and again? No longer did we trust Him. No longer was He good. No longer could we see all of the remaining paradise.
When Eve stood there under that tree’s leafy shade, determining that she needed what God had said no to, she closed herself to the rain of His grace. So began our long drought. Focused on that which she was not to have, she lost all that she did have. Ingratitude throws us out the Garden and into the barren wilderness of despair.
And even long after I personally said yes to God, I still lived no, developing macular holes on the retina of my soul. Blind spots, missing God present and giving.
Funny, my soul’s macular hole seemed to spontaneously heal in church. There God’s obvious, close. Bibles lay open in laps, the sanctuary fills with hymnal worship, reverent and real, and the table, spread with the emblems, that singular cup and loaf, calls us to remember, to see. There, even I could see. But the rest of the week, the days lived in the glaring harshness of the gritty world? There, yes, full-thickness macular holes, complete loss of central vision, a world pocked with scarcity. I could find no water well.
I wasn’t good enough, my children weren’t good enough. Our church needed more of this, our community more of that. Now that we’d finally got this fixed, couldn’t we now tackle that? Sure, the new house down the road was lovely, but when were they going to get the lawn seeded? I appreciated the neighbor’s lively conversation, but when he was going to get busy, lose a bit of weight, find a wife?
My sister’s jarring death had torn a hole into the canvas of my world right at my beginning. Now everywhere I looked, I only saw all that wasn’t. Holes, lack, deficiency.
One life loss can infect all of our life, a rash that wears through the fabric of our days, our seeing, with black voids, shadowy fissures, endless abysses.
Part of this week's prayerful focus on Choices. Part One here. Part Three here.
Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add you either simply your name or a web link to the "1000 Endless Gifts" blogroll in the sidebar-- we invite you to join the Gratitude Community!)
"At the end of the day, life is beautiful or ugly. It depends from what angle you look."
His post Looking from Different Angles is achingly powerful.....
:::
Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add you either simply your name or a web link to the "1000 Endless Gifts" blogroll in the sidebar-- we invite you to join the Gratitude Community!)
It never ceases, this wind. It is endless, rippling through billions of wheat blades, dancing with the maple leaves all up the lane. Invariably, faithfully, this wind comes, sometimes whispering on breezes, sometimes roaring in the rush of it all; always more to say. It is constant.
But I know little of that, constancy. His inspired Word reads, “Pray constantly.” And I think, spooning honey into mixing bowl, if only I knew how to be the wind. Constant. Like the Spirit, always moved and moving, closer, onward, upward.
Life stifles under glaring sun, and I know prayers like a desperate gust, an imperceptible breath, hot and too near. Lukewarm.
Once I slept a July night in the nearness of a travel van, sweaty legs sticking, summer suffocating while I writhed. I needed wind. Opening the oven door, I went into night, searching. Toes found black surf rolling up the sand and the sky currents, wave after wave, washed cool over skin. That’s what I want, winds over water, fresh prayers, reviving, steady rhythms. And sometimes you have to move to find the wind.
So I do.
I stumble into it right there in the lulling routine of bread-making.
“Thank you, Lord, for grains of salt. For the color of this oil, sun streaming gold through its gold, the way it splashes into flour, pools into yeast foaming at the edge. Thank you, Father, for the stringy sinews attached to each bone in these fingers that scoop and pour and measure and stir…”
The wind sweeps in and I feel alive.
This is not practicing the presence of God, but the practice of waking to His presence. When I pray praise, I wake to Him who rides in on the air I breathe. That close. When, moment by moment, I attend to all that fills the now, and give thanks for it, this is to pray constantly.
“Wherever you are, be all there,” said Jim Elliot, that esteemed missionary martyred for Christ in Ecuador. Wherever you are, be entirely present to God who meets you in that space.
Too often, I don’t know how. The possibilities of problems that lurk around the next corner lure me on into worry. The pain of all that failed in the past trip me up in regret. I run ahead on the road, slamming into anxiety. I run back the path, grabbed by disappointment. I struggle to stay in the present, to be all here wherever I am. Yet attending to the beauty and bounty of each singular moment, paying attention to now by praying thanksgiving for this moment, and this moment, and this moment, I stay here. I become wind in this place, constantly present, constantly praying.
“Thank you for the warm softness of dough in hands, the tucking of this flecked goodness into pans old with history. Father, thank you for this stream of water gushing simply from a tap to wash away baking, for son who folded these dishtowels, the corners matching, folds straight.”
Is this communion unending?
“Wherever you are, be all there,” is possible as I give thanks for what is just now. This is meeting God who is the great I AM. I AM fills the present moment. I am learning that gratitude ushers into the grandeur of He who spills with glory now. Giving thanks is a way to be all here, a way to meet the I AM who is here.
But He too is the Alpha and the Omega, the One back there on the road, the One further up. He is both ahead and behind. We can rest in the memories of His past faithfulness , trust in the hope plans He has for our futures. So we are released to the joy of simply staying all here, knowing His goodness wherever this moment has us.
On a routine day in the kitchen, the clouds racing overhead, I find the sacred in the ordinary. I know wind. The practice of praying thanks for wherever I am, and whatever I have, this is to pray constantly, to meet God and live in His presence.
The bread rises, the wind blows, and I am all here, giving thanks.
Could there be more?
In need of joy's elixir? Take a moment and click through the Gratitude Community in the sidebar's blogroll. You'll be blessed. Nothing revives a heart like giving thanks.
Just a wee glimpse of praises in the assembly:
~Kari splashes in joy with a photo blog of the 1000 gifts
~Meagan makes Dandelion Wine out of a late Monday morning and pancakes -- yes! Beautiful!
~Jenni counts gifts of curling toes, baseball cap grins, the giddy happiness of new life coming. I smile too.
and so many, many more... The whole earth is full of His glory!
Have you considered establishing gratitude as a personal soul fixture? Just grab a scrap of paper lying around and begin counting the blessings, with your own 1000 Endless Gifts:
Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add you either simply your name or a web link to the "1000 Endless Gifts" blogroll in the sidebar-- we invite you to join the Gratitude Community!)
quiet days of nearby Mennonites, windmill keeping time with simple lives
:::
homemade loaves sliced in warm light,
peanut butter spread, smoothies and happy faces waiting
:::
a bouquet (and fungus find) picked from woods by little hands,
carefully placed to surprise at breakfast table
:::
hushed wonder of new niece days
:::
Mennonite homestead, laundry flapping in spring winds, horses in fields
:::
shadow self-portrait as the tractor driver, picking stones as suns sinks lower
:::
Hung over desk in the study, a gentle reminder for this Mama to daily sacrifice,
to pluck Feathers for this Nest,
an unspeakably gracious gift from Amy at A Mile in My Shoes
(Researcher exradordinare, Amy found that a poster of Koester's, "Moulting Ducks," may be procured from The Frye Art Museum in Seattle )
:::
God's Grace:
"Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?"
~G.K. Chesterton
(photo by 9-yr-old Hope-girl who ran to find a camera to capture the colors God brushed across the skies)
Lord of all, for all these things, we give thanks...
:::
We’ve hacked, sprayed, mowed and plucked. Stubbornly, endlessly, they erupt, blazing molten from the earth’s bowels. These volcanoes defy extinguishing.
And a memory sparks too of a long ago walk down a gravel road with spring all gusting in.
My maternal grandmother, elegant, refined, steps jauntily along in her tightly laced shoes, her wide heel clipping over potholes. One long arm swings briskly, the other clutches her sweater flapping in kite-winds.
My sister, double dimples stitching cheeks, piggy-tales flying, skips along beside. Her short legs struggle to keep pace with Granny’s strides. Weary, little sister finally slows, wilts down into waving ditch grasses. There she sits content to lace lion necklaces. Granny will retrieve her on the way home.
It’s this that flashes every spring: Granny’s face contorting with disgust when little sister jumps onto roadside, festooning with a profusion of miniature suns. Lion drool stains her neck and hands. Granny’s voice stiffly declines the invitation to carry the bouquet home.
And when little sister leaves the bunch on the kitchen counter in hopes that Granny will find a vase, I stand in the dining room and watch her open the cupboard under the sink and quietly toss the mass of yellow into garbage can’s dark.
I’ve inherited a strong disdain for dandelions.
But there’s another legacy that could have been mine.
The man in the black-and-white photograph atop a cabinet in the living room would have smiled at this morning regaled on yellow carpet. Or so I’m told. Robert John Morton, my great-grandfather, died before I was born, my younger brother his namesake. It’s not hard to imagine that weathered man in the photograph, his leathery hands holding the reins of two Clydesdales, happily fancying dandelions. The pasture in which R.J. stands flashes with glaring sun-orbs.
My father tells the story every spring when terra firma bursts with fireballs.
“They were Grandpa R.J.’s favorite flower and he wasn’t ashamed to tell anyone that. And here we go waging war against them.” Dad’s work-furrowed hand pulls the peak of his cap lower. “Guess beauty is all in the eye of the beholder.”
Beauty depends on how you frame the world.
Like all other spring mornings that have gone before, I look out my window and frame this dandelion pimpled landscape with Granny’s disdain. It doesn’t have to be that way. I could choose Great-Grandpa R.J.’s frame for this day rising. For the man never saw dandelion weeds. Only regal manes, flowers of grandeur. Kingly blooms.
R.J.’s sun-baked face would have lit with words I overheard of a dandelion-wise girl: “These are not weeds. These are wishing flowers.”
Wishing flowers. Not weeds. But globes of prayer seeds to be caught up in the Spirit, carried where He blows.
Not weeds at all. For isn’t a weed only a weed if we don’t want it there?
I think about my life with its patches of tangle that I deem weeds. The messes I determine need eradication. Staining bunches of life I don’t want to touch, that I think best suits a garbage can.
Maybe I’m wrong.
True, I don’t want some of those tangles there: strong-willed children, chronic pain, lean finances. So I christen them weeds. But maybe God planted each here.
If God allowed it into my life, isn’t it intended for good? To mold this life to be more like His. When I scorn, begrudge, the dandelions in my life, I miss the beauty in what I may have not planned for my life. But God did.
With God, there are no weeds, only gardens. He redeems the weeds that took root in the Garden of Eden with the surrender of the Garden of Gethsemane. Though anguished to the point of pores oozing droplets of salty blood, Jesus took the cup. Gethsemane’s Garden pierced. But for our salvation.
God’s the redemptive Gardner, taking the dastardly meant for evil and using it for good. Petals intended for loveliness.
"Wasn't that worth every single day of it?" The words are soft. No one speaks loud on holy ground. I search my sister's eyes.
She smiles, looks down into those gleaming black jewels just opening.
"Entirely." She strokes that heaven-fresh cheek. "If you only knew... had a window ahead to see... then you'd know for all those days where you just want to give up. It is more than worth it."
A stretching yawn captivates. Smitten, we laugh.
"It's like heaven, isn't it?" I watch Little Ana sigh, purse her lip, bubble. "If we just had a window ahead... We'd know these hard days are worth it."
Quiet settles and we let it, eyes only for this miracle bundled. I smell her whisp of black hair, kiss her forehead.
And then... after a bit, the realization comes slowly.
"You know....," my eyes don't leave that flawless face. "We did know. We had a window ahead of why it was worth it: her three sisters."
My sister sadly nods. "True."
And through the twilight home, I can only speculate about all the windows ahead He opens, faintest glimpses of heaven's glory, that I miss, ignore.
Today I pray to wake. To wake to this endless stream of assurances He gives.
For all around He writes that heaven's coming wonder will be worth these long gestation days.
Lord, wake me to the windows of the soon-to-be that open into now. Let us bask in the rays of light, warmth to carry us through the weariness of gestation. Oh, the delivery coming!
Photo: Ana and I meeting