to roads where truth and righteousness echo His name.
Even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness, I am not overcome by fear. Because You are with me in those dark moments, near with Your protection and guidance, I am comforted.
You spread out a table before me, provisions in the midst of attack from my enemies; You care for all my needs, anointing my head with soothing, fragrant oil, filling my cup again and again with Your grace.
Morning Fog
Certainly Your faithful protection and loving provision will pursue me where I go, always, everywhere. I will always be with the Eternal, in Your house forever.
I heard somewhere that if you can worry, you can meditate. The difference between worry and meditation is just the subject matter. To the believer in Christ meditation is not an emptying, but a filling.
When we worry we reflect upon the evidence of things seen. We ponder it, we turn it over in our minds, we obsess about not having a workable solution, about how “It cannot be done.” Worry leads to unbelief.
When we meditate we reflect upon the substance of hope, the evidence of things unseen. When we reflect on the promises of God and bring back to memory the times when He has demonstrated his faithfulness we are filled with faith and hope.
Clarity and obscurity mingle on the horizon. Oh, we need wisdom and understanding, Lord! Sometimes the words sound right, but the spirit feels wrong. Sometimes the spirit feels right but the words sound wrong. Sometimes your greatest gifts arrive in packages easily rejected, and sometimes we delight so much in the wrapping we fail to notice the gift box contains a mere peanut. Help us, Lord!
O Lord, listen to my cry; give me the discerning mind you promised. Listen to my prayer; rescue me as you promised. Let praise flow from my lips, for you have taught me your decrees.
This has been a week of severe testing. I got a new computer.
I had to hot-wire my old one to get it started and the speaker jack only worked if I spoke to it very kindly reinserting the plug, honestly, up to fifty times to find the magic connection, then taping it there quickly before it disconnected again. Like an old person who complains you never come to visit them (when you just spent the whole day sorting their mail) and who speaks only of the past, its memory was not accepting new information or keep up with the times. It took frequent naps in the middle of our conversations.
My husband bought me a new one. Together with his nephew they worked all summer to put together a super-duper package with graphics boards and memory capacity beyond anything I’ve known before. It’s fantastic.
I just don’t know how to use it.
The new updated programs they put on don’t look anything like the old ones. I don’t recognize this Photoshop. My songs written in Finale have pretty little hearts all over the clefs instead of notes. My poetry and articles and collection of quotes and blog ideas are all on a drive in the country somewhere and my photos open in a window with a strange vista I’ve never seen before. Apparently my email is disavowing all knowledge of me as well. My bookmarks have disappeared, my iTunes is gone and I am forced to recall all my passwords. For a technophobe this week has been a nightmare. I feel so incompetent.
I lost my peace there for a while. I tend to take it out on my poor husband and blame him for inventing the computer, but he loves me and has my best interest at heart. He sees greater potential for the things I have been using a computer for than I do sometimes. (His generosity is astounding. He also bought me a new camera this summer after I dropped my old one.) I keep having to ask for his help, and sometimes, like the good teacher he is, he just tells me to go away and play around with it until I figure it out myself. (Grrr)
I was belly-aching to my daughter (who is a professional photographer and who promised to teach me how to use the professional level Photoshop) and she reminded me, “Give thanks in everything, Mom. It’s the way back to peace.”
She gives good advice. As I adjust my attitude to thankfulness and rejoicing I am beginning to see how this new computer is going to be such a blessing. But it’s like getting a promotion that requires a period of adjustment and leaves me feeling vulnerable. The panic has started to subside, and I’m becoming a little more reasonable and able to figure things out a bit.
God uses our weaknesses better than our strengths, sometimes, because when we feel most incompetent we are most willing to ask for and listen to his advice. It’s a good thing.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-17)
And I figured out how to process a photo I took down by the river this week into a black and white version using the new computer and a new program. God is good.
Our son and his wife and their two children moved into temporary housing this week. They now have a place of their own after being homeless all summer when their house (along with thousands of others) was flooded in Alberta. It’s a cramped two room trailer in a new neighbourhood of identical cramped trailers and a far cry from what they had, but they are thankful.
The children are back to school. Our granddaughter’s school yard is full of portable classrooms as it is also accommodating students who no longer have their own school buildings. One of those buildings was the beautiful new Catholic school, Holy Spirit Academy.
“We have to make room for Holy Spirit now,” she told me.
Indeed we do, sweetheart.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again,but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”(John 4:10-14)
The past few days were unearned. I was a guest of people I care deeply about who own a magnificent three-story villa on a beautiful lake. When both they and my husband were called away by other obligations I had all three stories of luxury to myself to write, to meditate, to pray.
I didn’t own the villa. As a retiree there is no way I could afford a place like this. In fact, I could probably not afford to rent a place like this for even one night. It was a free gift. Other than cleaning up after myself and making sure the door was locked when I went out for a walk along the shore early in the morning I had no responsibilities toward its upkeep. My only obligation was to enjoy it.
Dusk on the Water
And I did. I sat in the hot tub on the roof garden and contemplated the stars. I sat on the bench beside the lake and absorbed the pink sunset flickering in the water. I helped myself to peaches freshly plucked from a tree. I slept in a bedroom almost the size of my house. I even came to appreciate the fact that in the interest of interpersonal connectivity the owner disconnected from the internet. It was just me and God in that villa by the lake.
I felt the Lord saying, “Thus is my grace. It’s a gift. You have done nothing to earn my love. You can’t earn my love. Just sit in my presence and let me love on you a little longer.”
Today, back home, with responsibilities and guests of my own to minister to, I am aware that every breath I take is a gift and I am determined to enjoy His continued presence, for He has promised to never leave me. He is here.
The Eternal is my shepherd, 
He provides me rest in rich, green fields
beside streams of refreshing water.
Even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness,
You spread out a table before me,
Charis: Subject to Change 