Spring’s Honey

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them your servant is warned…Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me.

Spring knocked on the door of my garage this past weekend. The sun, long barred by layers of packing tape, sprung into re-opened cardboard boxes, boxes that had been sealed and stacked from a move that happened over a year and a half ago. Its sudden light scattered silverfish. I pulled out clothes and kitchen wares, books and blankets. I held them up in the light to name them. In the light, they received new purposes; things to be cleaned and put to use again, or things to be discarded. In this spring cleaning, hidden things are being laid bare. The beginnings of order are leafing in my garage. Continue reading “Spring’s Honey”

Whispers through the Veil

I have met many Christians who speak confidently about God’s conversations with them. They are likely to say things like, “God told me to go down one more aisle; I did, and lo and behold, there was a parking place! Isn’t that just like God,” they ask. I have never had God tell me that, and I have trouble relating to it. I have wondered if they are really hearing God as well as why I don’t seem to hear such things.

Most of my Christian experience is with a veiled God. I can talk to him, but if he talks to me it is not as he did with Adam in the garden. His voice is a silent one, heard in the timbre of my own voice as I read the written words of scripture. On those special occasions when I am praying and unique words spring to my consciousness, I sometimes think it is God, but I don’t always know with clarity those words were his and not just my own imaginings.

Then there are days when I do know, when the words that form in the quiet of my being are unmistakably his and uncannily personal. Though they’ve never pointed me to a parking place, when these moments happen, the words are as intimate as a whisper. They penetrate the veil, and for a moment, the light of God’s face touches mine and reveals his heart to me in a way I cannot deny.

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A Cry in the Dark

The birth of God as Son of Man happened in the dark night. A young girl, bulging with the promised Savior, was forced to leave home on a lengthy journey that would bump her along dirty roads at the behest of a donkey and a king’s command to be counted. She was near the time of giving birth. As a woman who has birthed four children in sanitary hospital rooms, who was discouraged from travel during the final month of pregnancy, I can barely imagine Mary making her way to Bethlehem in such primitive conveyance. Yet she did, with the promise that she bore God himself.

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