Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.
-Lewis B. Smedes
Steep your life in God-reality,
God-initiative,
God-provisions.
Don’t worry about missing out.
You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now,
and don’t get worked up
about what may or may not happen tomorrow.
God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up
when the time comes.
-Jesus
(Matthew 6:33,34 The Message)
Yesterday I scrambled down a deep ditch and through brambles and thickets and barbed wire looking for a pond I remembered that might still have colourful leaves around it.
“Oh Lord, please let this be worthwhile,” I prayed under my breath as I unsnagged my sweater from another monstrous Russian thistle.
“Secret Place” (click on photo to enlarge)
He answered.
Oh, Lord, you are seriously good. You gave me a gift of more than I imagined. Thank you.
And since he created me to be creative I played with the photos when I got home.
Here’s the thing, my other prayer yesterday was just wanting to know if he loved me. There are those out there who say I am deceived, I have disappointed my Lord and am heading for hell. In a still silent voice he spoke through riotous colour. “Seriously? What do you think? You just posted a scripture today about true believers having the mind of Christ available to them. Think with that mind.”
Right.
Father, out of Your honorable and glorious riches, strengthen Your people. Fill their souls with the power of Your Spirit so that through faith the Anointed One will reside in their hearts. May love be the rich soil where their lives take root. May it be the bedrock where their lives are founded so that together with all of Your people they will have the power to understand that the love of the Anointed is infinitely long, wide, high, and deep, surpassing everything anyone previously experienced. God, may Your fullness flood through their entire beings.
This is a doxology of praise to the One with power that is beyond understanding.
Now to the God who can do so many awe-inspiring things, immeasurable things, things greater than we ever could ask or imagine through the power at work in us, to Him be all glory in the church and in Jesus the Anointed from this generation to the next, forever and ever. (Ephesians 3:16-21 The Voice)
In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river,
was there the tree of life,
which bare twelve manner of fruits,
and yielded her fruit every month:
and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
(Revelation 22:2)
Charis: Subject to Change 