Tag: change

New Era

On By Charis PsalloIn PhotographyLeave a comment

“Love makes it impossible to harm another, so love fulfills all that the law requires.

To live like this is all the more urgent, for time is running out and you know it is a strategic hour in human history. It is time for us to wake up! For our full salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

Night’s darkness is dissolving away as a new day of destiny dawns. So we must once and for all strip away what is done in the shadows of darkness, removing it like filthy clothes.

And once and for all we clothe ourselves with the radiance of light as our weapon.

We must live honorably, surrounded by the light of this new day, not in the darkness of drunkenness and debauchery, not in promiscuity and sensuality, not being argumentative or jealous of others.

Instead fully immerse yourselves into the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, and don’t waste even a moment’s thought on your former identity to awaken its selfish desires.”

(Romans 13:10-14 TPT)

You can’t fight hate with more hate. You can’t fight darkness with more darkness. These are not your weapons. Put them down.

Instead be transformed. Rest in God’s love so you have an overflow of love to give away. Be empowered by the grace to change to become who God created you to be. Walk in the light as he is in the light. Clothe yourselves in the light of Christ.

It’s a new era.

Hope Deferred & Hope Restored

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography, spring2 Comments

Last year, in this part of the world, a sudden drop in temperature killed a lot of buds on the fruit tress that had started to form too soon. The vineyards suffered severe damage as well. Most of the soft fruit and a lot of the grape crop for the Okanagan a was loss.

The orchards are not only pretty this spring, they are full of promise.

They remind me of hope deferred and hope restored.

Thank you, Lord.

The Exile of Passivity

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, PhotographyLeave a comment

“The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk.”

-Alan Hirsch

Wisdom and Discernment

On By Charis PsalloIn autumnLeave a comment

My child, never drift off course from these two goals for your life:
to walk in wisdom and to discover discernment.
Don’t ever forget how they empower you.
For they strengthen you inside and out
and inspire you to do what’s right;
you will be energized and refreshed by the healing they bring.
They give you living hope to guide you,
and not one of life’s tests will cause you to stumble.
(Proverbs 3:21-23 TPT) 

Clean, Pure

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography, Uncategorized2 Comments

Who can possibly ascend the mountain of the Eternal?

Who can stand before Him in sacred spaces?

Only those whose hands have been washed and hearts made pure…

Psalm 24:3,4 (The Voice)

Transformer

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, nature, PhotographyLeave a comment

Before we give real attention to the ways Jesus wants to transform our lives, we must reach a better understanding of his complete familiarity with our lives. He’s comfortable with us. He knows us intimately—even those things no one else knows. When we come to him with our needs, when we realize that we can bring our emptiness to him, we’re finally in a place where we can see his power at work in us. -Max Lucado

Purple

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography, spring5 Comments

When God made the color purple, God was just showing off.

-Mae Jemison

Like many teenage girls, when I finally had a room of my own, I chose to decorate it in shades of purple. It fit the person in process that I was then. Purple takes the innocent sweetness of posie pink, the audacity of in-your-face magenta, the rage of raw red, the perfect peace of prairie lake blue, the hopeful ascension of sky blue and the deep reverence of mystical indigo and swirls them all around in an unsteady mix of hot and cold. If I look long enough, I can see the colours that make up purple dancing and spinning in a nervous partnership that leaves evidence they are never really fully committed to their roles. This is purple, the colour I chose for the first space I could call mine.

I may be a retired seventy-year old, but I’m not content to squeeze my accumulated years into a single conclusive expression. In my dreams I’m still a bewildered child, a wizened saint, a mischievous flirt, an introspective ponderer, an angry idealist, a conscientious servant, a lover of the unlovely, a reconciled plodder, and an every-which-way-at-once teen trying on each mood and personality in my cache before coming out of my room to run and catch the day. I wonder if, in ancient times, this may be why purple was a colour reserved for priests and royalty (aside from expense). Perhaps only those with the assumed freedom and time to appreciate the tenuous stability of paradox (and its influence on helpless bystanders) could wrap the heights of humility and the depths of pride around themselves in the ambivalent glory of purple and sally forth.

I too shall wear purple. It fits the person in process that I am now. I am, after all, with millions of others, part of a royal priesthood of believers. That’s qualification enough.

My thoughts at least, before I make the same to-do list for tomorrow as I made for today, prop my arthritic knee on my purple pillow, and turn off the light .

Opening

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, nature, Photography, springLeave a comment

Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness, the nourishment of the mind with his truth, the purifying of the imagination of his beauty, the opening of the heart to his love, the surrender of the will to his purpose. -William Temple

Response

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography, springLeave a comment

“The trouble with really seeing and really hearing is that then we really have to do something about what we have seen and heard.” ~ Frederick Buechner

Sometimes, for some of us, a simple prayer of appreciation to the Creator of love and beauty for his goodness to us is as great a victory over self-centeredness as is sailing across the world to set a thousand captives free.