Tag: inspiration

Higher

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Sky7 Comments

birds clouds pink ch IMG_3979

It is in vain for man to endeavor to instruct man in those things which the Holy Spirit alone can teach.

— Madame Guyon

I had a dream a few years ago in which an angel came to visit me. I wasn’t frightened, just terribly curious because I couldn’t discern its gender. I kept looking surreptitiously for lumps or bumps under his/her/it’s loose garment that would give something away. It’s quite an unusual occasion, to say the least, to dream of seeing an angel and I wasn’t sure why he/she/it was there or what I was supposed to do.  Finally it dawned on me that I should do something hospitable and I offered to make tea.  I grabbed an old-style kettle with a long narrow spout and tried to fill it at the sink. The water from the faucet came out with greater water pressure than we had ever had before in that house. The hole in the spout was partially closed and I was having a difficult time filling the kettle through the tiny opening. Water was spraying all over the place.

My guest sighed.

“That,” he/she/it said. “That is the problem!”

“What is?”

“You are asking questions but trying to explain the answers to you is like filling a big kettle through a tiny hole. Take the lid off!”

Why didn’t I think of that?

“You have much to learn but answering your questions is like trying to explain the internet to someone who has never heard a radio, or a seen a light bulb. You need another way to take in information than the way you have been doing it.”

Then I woke up, confused of course, and feeling a little reprimanded – and questioning my sanity because I didn’t know how seriously to take a dream. But I had a sense this was a God-dream. What was I doing now and how was I supposed to do things differently to “take the lid off?” I could study harder, and sign up for another Bible study course! Then I realized that would increase the pressure, and my brain was not receiving it all anyway. I was still stuck in old thinking patterns.

I tried to imagine myself explaining my day to a great great grandmother who knew nothing of electricity or motorized vehicles. I started with the radio alarm going off in the morning and listening to a man hundreds of miles away read the weather forecast for the day and talk about the price of oil in Azerbaijan. Then I took some cooked quinoa from South America I had stored in the refrigerator and warmed it up with raisins from California and cinnamon from Sri Lanka (the old Ceylon, Grandma)  in the microwave for breakfast. While the coffee from Columbia was dripping into the carafe in the coffee maker I threw a load of laundry in the washing machine and tossed the wet clothes that had been there into the dryer…   It didn’t take long to realize that great great Grandma would have a lot of catching up to do. She would be amazed; she would be overwhelmed. I couldn’t explain it to her. She would have to spend time with me and learn about television remote controls and ignition keys and Google. I’m sure it would be disorienting, so maybe we would start with a light switch.

I have a lot of catching up to do. Sometimes my need for “prudent wisdom” is actually just the fear that the power of the deceiver is greater than the power of the One who gives the gift of wisdom. The result is narrow-mindedness.

Going higher means adopting a wider way of receiving than the physical senses can provide. It means opening up to the Holy Spirit in a way that does not require everything to pass through the tiny opening of mere scientific method and logic. It means knowing that some things can only be ascertained through spiritual senses (taking the lid off) and that requires spending a lot of time with Holy Spirit to learn his ways. If you don’t believe he exists, you won’t hear what he has to say or experience his input in understanding the scriptures or anything else. His ways will continue to seem strange — like explaining to a nineteenth-century person that using a “mouse” to move an arrow on a screen to click a publish button will allow people around the world read your words the same day.

We have not yet even begun to fully understand the basics, let alone imagine all that the Lord has for us.

But a person who denies spiritual realities will not accept the things that come through the Spirit of God; they all sound like foolishness to him. He is incapable of grasping them because they are disseminated, discerned, and valued by the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:4 The Voice)

Enter In

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized3 Comments

IMG_2153 worship art ch repent road turn

The teacher asked us to reflect on what “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” means to us, then paint it.

This is not a detailed work of art. It’s a quick painting done during an evening of worship. As I thought about her question, this image is what came to mind.

I understand “repent” to mean change thought and direction.

The cross of Christ is the intersection where time and the eternal, and the physical and supernatural meet.

Jesus has broken every barrier down and his grace gives us the ability to change direction.

We enter everything God has for us — the Kingdom — through the cross.

From Heaven

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Music, Sky, Water5 Comments

sunset angelfire acrylic ch june

“Let all of God’s angels worship him.”

Regarding the angels, God says,
“He sends his angels like the winds,
his servants like flames of fire.”
(from Hebrews 1)

Other thirteen-year olds asked for the new Beatles album for their coming of age birthday gift. I asked for a recording of opera singer Joan Sutherland’s greatest hits. I’m sure it caused a few eye rolls in my country and gospel music loving family, but Grandma bought it for me anyway. I thought the singer’s voice was “angelic” although I’d never actually heard an angel sing. I could only play the record when no one else was around but I still managed to almost wear it out. Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim became one of my favourites.

Let the bright seraphim in burning row, their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow. Let the cherubic host in tuneful choirs touch their immortals harps with golden wires.

I could imagine myriads upon myriads of fiery angels singing and blowing brilliant trumpets that sent their sound spinning through the galaxies.

I am on a quest to understand worship. I don’t think I understand it yet. Okay, I know I don’t understand exactly what it is or the nature of its expression yet. It is going on non-stop in heaven as the angels and the elders and the creatures, overwhelmed with God’s majesty spontaneously bow before the Great Throne. What must it be like?

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels,

numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!”
(From Revelation 5)

One of the jobs of angels is to help us to worship. Somehow our worship is connected to theirs even though we can’t hear it all yet. It starts in the throne room in heaven.

I remember the chorus of a song my mother sang:

Holy, holy, is what the angels sing,
And I expect to help them make the courts of Heaven ring;
But when I sing redemption’s story, they will fold their wings,
For angels never felt the joys that our salvation brings.

I hit a milestone today. My 1001st blog post. I could thank my readers and post links to most popular past blogs, or discuss the experience of blog writing, but as I sit here at the end of a beautiful summer’s day preparing a post for the morning I find I have nothing profound to say. All I want to do is thank God for his goodness and for the hope that does not disappoint. I thank him for a blog on which to express praise that can be flung into cyberspace, if not the galaxies. Today I all I want to do is sing redemption’s story.

God is good. For some reason I will never understand, He loves me — and you. Any other thing I could celebrate pales in comparison.

Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights above.

Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his heavenly hosts.

Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars.

Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies…
(From Psalm 148)

Worthy is the Lamb.

Save

Save

Soli Deo Gloria

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography1 Comment

 

Soli Deo Gloria
Soli Deo Gloria

I am pleading with the Eternal for this one thing,
my soul’s desire:
To live with Him all of my days—
in the shadow of His temple,
To behold His beauty and ponder His ways
in the company of His people.

His house is my shelter and secret retreat.
It is there I find peace in the midst of storm and turmoil.
Safety sits with me in the hiding place of God.
He will set me on a rock, high above the fray.

God lifts me high above those with thoughts
of death and deceit that call for my life.
I will enter His presence, offering sacrifices and praise.
In His house, I am overcome with joy
As I sing, yes, and play music for the Eternal alone.

(Psalm 27 The Voice)

Moralism and Grace

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Man made, Photography1 Comment

 

Black and White
Black and White

“Postmodern people have been rejecting Christianity for years, thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism.”
– Timothy Keller

It made grammatical sense to me. When I was little, I added an “er” to the word bug when referring to my even littler brother, because he was bugging me.

Mom washed my mouth out with soap for my efforts to extend my understanding of linguistic principles. I didn’t know it was a bad word. That event made such an impact on me that I remember it all these years later. I resolved as a three year old that when I was a grownup I would explain the rules to my kids before dishing out consequences for violating them. Unfair! It was a justice issue for me then. It still is.

My husband and I were discussing the question of how to teach the principle of grace to young children in a Christian education setting. We both taught Sunday School for years and became frustrated with pre-packaged lesson plans that required every Bible story to have a moral. Nearly every one of them was a moral about behaviour — shoulds and should-nots. A lot of them were stories from the Old Testament that did not take New Covenant grace into consideration. Be like the good guys. Don’t be like the bad guys, because God is watching. (How do we explain that everyone, except Jesus, was both good and bad without glossing over the embarrassing details the Bible does not gloss over?)

What we truly believe becomes evident when we distill it down to concepts we try to teach to little ones. But how do we teach the concepts of grace and forgiveness to children (or others) who don’t yet know the difference between right and wrong?

Grace is not a laissez faire message that sin has no consequences. Skipping that truth is really unfair. Sin is not okay. Never has been. Never will be. I do think there is a difference between sin (defying God’s principles) and un-wise actions though. Sometimes even though you have been working at a job for 32 years, and know it inside out and backwards, a boss will require you to do something that you know is stupid. It will cost you great inconvenience later to clean up the mess, but the boss is in authority, so you do it. It’s not a sin; it’s just un-wise on the boss’s part. If the boss asks you to eliminate a competitor in the back alley, however, there is no question. That is sin. You refuse to submit, no matter the cost.

Sometimes we choose unwise actions of our own volition. When we come to our senses it involves changing our minds and policies, and probably offering some apologies, but it’s not the same as deliberately choosing to disobey Jesus’ command to love your neighbour, for example.

The Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was. Children need to be taught what he said: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Luke 12: 30-31 ESV).

Four times in his final charge to his disciples Jesus said loving him and being his friend meant keeping his commandments. Then this: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John15:12).

Sometimes love means being quiet and leading by example. Sometimes love means letting children learn the discipline of natural consequences. Sometimes love means tackling a kid who is big for his age before he hurts himself or somebody else. How this plays out in your life depends on the wisdom God gives you when you ask Him.

By the time a child can think for himself he knows he has missed the mark. Holy Spirit speaks to them too. Even as a child I knew that labeling my brother according to his on-going temptation to bug me was not loving him — even if I didn’t use the right word.

When I was depressed and in the midst of burn-out from trying to earn God’s approval a counselor asked me, “What does grace feel like?” I gave him the Bible school definition. He said, “No. I asked what grace feels like.”

I had no idea. I was a product of moralism. After a search in which I asked many other people this question – including some joyless Christians I did not admire – I came to an understanding. Grace to me now is climbing up on the lap of the Creator of the universe, (someone who has the power to annihilate me in a flash), resting my head on his chest and knowing I am perfectly safe because he loves me. Grace lets me know I am forgiven and enables me to change because he whispers encouraging words and tells me who I really am in his eyes. He loves me because he loves me because he loves me. The Creator sent his son, who lived as a man, who both accepted and spoke the truth to those caught in sin, chose to die at the hands of those he came to save, and conquered death just to prove it.

How do we teach children (and others) about grace? By demonstrating it. By speaking the truth about the way God sees them -as lovable. By loving them the way we are loved, including setting wise boundaries, teaching them to base their choices on love (and not mere tolerance) and becoming who they are meant to be. We teach by extending a grace that costs everything the way Jesus extended grace to us.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. – Jesus Christ

Save

Save

Response

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Music, Trees and forests2 Comments

IMG_3304 lupine forest ch

Ubi Caritas

Where charity and love are, God is there.
Christ’s love has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And may we love each other with a sincere heart.

Where charity and love are, God is there.
As we are gathered into one body,
Beware, lest we be divided in mind.
Let evil impulses stop, let controversy cease,
And may Christ our God be in our midst.

Where charity and love are, God is there.
And may we with the saints also,
See Thy face in glory, O Christ our God:
The joy that is immense and good,
Unto the ages through infinite ages. Amen.

(Ancient hymn)

Zeal

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography6 Comments

IMG_3363 yellow flowers left cool

 

Zeal without knowledge is disappointing.
Zeal without wisdom is damaging.
Zeal without purity is dangerous.
Zeal without love is deadly.

But zeal,
submitted to
Jesus Christ
and his knowledge,
wisdom,
purity,
and love
can change the world.

Instead

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography1 Comment

IMG_3041 wild roses woods

 

My rose bush produced one measly flower this year, yet in the forest, untended and uncoddled, the wild roses bloom freely.

Sometimes I fret and rush about trying to make things grow when and where I decide they ought to, when really I’m not in charge at all. I can’t force relationships to bloom when and where and how I want them too either.

The roses in the woods remind me that Jesus said, “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to this span of life?”

“Instead, seek his kingdom and all these things will be added to you.”

This Is Not Who You Are

On By Charis PsalloIn Just folks, Photography1 Comment
Great Great Grandpa Robert
Great Great Grandpa Robert

 

Have you ever tried to ditch a nickname? It’s not easy. Some people have had to move to get away from less than complimentary labels.

My granddaughter and I are working together on a genealogy project for school. We lucked into some work that other people had already done and were willing to share. She typed as I read names and birth and death dates out loud. Robert… William… Robert… William… Robert… Robert… Robert… William

“Wow. These people had no creativity at all when it came to names, “ she observed.

I agreed. A singular lack of imagination. Like many families in previous centuries, our ancestors apparently chose from a very small book of baby names, unlike in this century when my Dad couldn’t recognize or spell any of his great grandchildren’s names. Robert, William, Robert, William. That was the expectation and that’s where nicknames came in. There had to be a way to tell them apart.

Now I say this with apologies to all the Roberts in my extended family (and there are many) since names are something you rarely get to choose for yourself, but nearly every one of them has spent their adolescent years trying to ditch the name, “Bobby” and replace it with Bob or Rob or Robert. Bobby is not a bad name and many guys have decided to keep it into adulthood. It’s certainly not like other nicknames assigned by insensitive 10-year old friends with a predilection for bodily function humour, but it’s hard to change and even when you reach retirement age your mother will still be calling you Bobby. She can be as proud as the dickens that you are now Dr. Robert or President Robert or the Right Honourable Sir Robert, but she will still call you Bobby in front of your colleagues.

Reputations can be like that. Some people have to move to get away from labels people have hung on them – even “good” labels. The pretty one, the athletic one, the klutsy one, the unreliable one. Labels can hang on long after they are applicable. Sometimes the people who most want us to change and mature are the least likely to remove the old label and the expectations stapled to it.

I’m still working on understanding the word consolation (earlier musings here) and I’ve been wondering about what the character of Joseph of Cyprus (Joey, Joe?) was like. Why did his friends give him the nickname, “Son of Consolation” – Barnabas in their language.

Two incidents stand out to me, although Barnabas had already earned his honorary name before these occurrences. The first is when he took Saul the persecutor and introduced him to the new believers in Jesus Christ and leaders of the new church in Jerusalem. He laid his own reputation on the line to vouch for serious change in the guy who had tried to silence and even kill them. More than that, he again acted on his perceptions when he invited Saul – who later changed his own name to Paul (small) to come help him with a thriving community in Antioch, where believers were first called “Little Christs” – Christians.

The second incident has always caused me problems. Years later, after many adventures together, Barnabas and Paul had “a sharp disagreement” over including John Mark (a cousin or perhaps nephew of Barnabas) on the missions trip because he had chickened out once before. Had Mark changed by that point and Paul didn’t believe it? Did Mark need more one-on-one counseling and inner healing so Barnabas took him back to Cyprus for “restoration therapy”? Was Mark really the issue or was Paul still upset with Barnabas over the not eating with Gentiles incident? Was Barnabas bothered by the fact they were now called Paul and Barnabas and no longer Barnabas and Paul? Did the Lord allow “the sharp dispute” to send them in a wider direction, apprenticing more disciples and developing greater influence in the process? Were they both right? Were they both wrong? Was it a mix? I don’t know.

What I do know is that the label, “Useless Deserter,” hung on Mark turned out to be totally inaccurate. Later he wrote the gospel of Mark and Paul even sent for him because he was “useful.” Perhaps Mark’s true calling was to be a writer and not a missionary. (I like to encourage myself with that thought anyway.)

The outstanding trait of Barnabas in both situations seems to be his ability to see people’s potential, to see them as God saw them. As an apostle, a father, he was willing to nurture, protect and advance people who carried “nicknames” from their immature years. He was a facilitator of change. I wonder if this was the character quality that contributed to his own new label – Son of Consolation, Son of Encouragement.

I was surprised to find out that in the Greek that the word translated consolation here is parakletos – the same name that Jesus used for the Holy Spirit when he said The Comforter is coming! There was something in Barnabas that people recognized as a characteristic of Holy Spirit – consolation, comfort, empowerment.

Could it be that one aspect of the consolations that delight our souls (Psalm 94:19) is that God sees us for what we will become? He removes old labels and goes before us to defend us – to ourselves, and to others. He shows us our true identity. He is a facilitator of change.

He gives us a new name.

And it’s probably not Bobby.