Tag: inspiration

Into the Light

On By Charis PsalloIn Animals, Photography, Sky5 Comments

IMG_5679 flying geese sun ch

Heaven’s light
Breaking through,
Turning night to day,
It’s a new beginning.
Love has come,
Hope has dawned,
Driving fears away,
It’s a new beginning.

Your mercy reached into the darkest night to find us,
Your blood has freed us from the curse of sin that bound us,
Your truth delivered us from all the lies that held us down
When we were overwhelmed….

Oh, out of the darkness You rescued us,
You have rescued us,
Oh, into the light of Your love for us,
Lord, You rescued us.

Here we stand,
Held by grace,
Knowing every day
Is a new beginning.
All we need
Found in You,
Love has made a way,
It’s a new beginning.

No sorrow deep enough to crush the hope within us,
No mountain big enough to block the path before us,
No power strong enough to take us from Your mighty hand,
For You have overcome.

-Stuart Townend

For Freedom Set Free

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Photography, Sky6 Comments

white clouds
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
(Galatians 5:1)

With what a cost did Christ purchase our freedom! How cheaply we often sell ourselves back into slavery -and just for the reward of being able to measure our spirituality so we can compare our progress to other travelers on this road.  Stand firm therefore, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Father’s Good Pleasure

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography16 Comments

IMG_7931 pink spring
Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)

I found a little shrub in my garden. I didn’t plant it. I didn’t nurture or tend it. I don’t know what it is, but it is covered with tiny pink blossoms while everything else is still frozen. A free gift of promise that says, “More to come.”

Thank You.

20 Degrees!

On By Charis PsalloIn Music, Photography, Trees and forests8 Comments

IMG_7911 woods 5

Twenty degrees! (That’s room temperature for those of you living in the country that doesn’t use Celsius.) Yesterday the sun was shining! I opened the windows! I went out without a jacket!

I had work to do, but the forest paths called to me.

The snow was gone. The birds were singing! The trees were rustling! The scent of pine and fir and cedar is starting to return.

Ahhh

When through the woods and forest glades I wander

and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,

when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur

and see the brook and feel the gentle breeze,

then sings my souls, my Saviour God, to Thee,

“How great Thou art!”

 

 

 

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IMG_7882 woods

 

 

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IMG_7869 woods shadows

 

 

IMG_7876 woods path

Holy Fire

On By Charis PsalloIn Art3 Comments

Holy Spirit fire ch

Some lovely friends invited me to join them for a painting class on the theme of prophetic art or worship art. What a beautiful group of people! On this particular evening the instructor played worshipful music and asked us to paint the images -or the feelings- that came to mind when we thought of Holy Spirit. I’ve been trying to teach myself to hold a bigger brush more loosely and save sharply focused realism for photography. I did three very quick paintings in one sitting. Two were peaceful and sweet in soft, even feminine colours. Then, without too much thinking, I grabbed some colours and sloshed them on the canvas. This was the result.

Art is an experience between the work and the beholder and can have more than one interpretation. I sometimes see something the artist didn’t intend to say in a work, and sometimes people interpret my paintings differently as well, and I appreciate that. This time I found myself interpreting my own painting. What does  this say to me? Tongues of fire are often associated with the arrival of Holy Spirit at Pentecost and many songs are written about wanting to be filled with the passionate fire of God. I’ve seen people laugh and sing and praise God when they encounter his goodness. It’s a joyful experience.

But I have learned that not all God-encounters are fun experiences.

Encountering God’s holiness leaves us stripped of any sense of self-righteousness. We cry out like Isaiah, “Woe is me, for I am a person of unclean lips and I come from a people of unclean lips.” We sing, “Purify my heart, let it be as gold, pure gold…” or “Consuming fire, fan into flame a passion for your name…” but we want Him to do this in soft, comforting, nurturing, happy, happy, joy, joy, soft kitty/warm kitty pastel colours.

Holiness hurts.

Isaiah’s lips were symbolically purified when an angel touched them with a burning coal from the fire of God. Ouch!

Peter wrote:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:3-9)

The end result is praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The end result is joy unspeakable and full of glory. The end result is promotion to higher levels of intimacy with the Eternal.

But the process is not always painless. When we pass through the fires that test our faith all the false ideas we treasured are revealed for the mere counterfeit paper copies they are. Sometimes it means choosing, by faith, to lay the unreliable handholds of the past down on the altar before we have any firm handholds for the future. Without a theology that includes suffering we lack the motivation for perseverance that leads to mature character and true hope. Our sense of entitlement makes us avoid pain and equips us with a type of hope that is entirely too flammable. Without an understanding of the role of suffering we are blown away by adversity and crushed by disappointment.

True hope does not disappoint.

 Since then it is by faith that we are justified, let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles. Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance; this in turn will develop a mature character, and a character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us. Already we have some experience of the love of God flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us. (Romans 5:1-5 Phillips)

 

Save

Presently

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography2 Comments
April in Alberta
Winter is still holding on in Alberta

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

A Day of Celebration for a Miracle!

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized17 Comments

IMG_7136 yellow dress dance

Today is a day of celebration, not only because it is our precious granddaughter’s birthday (a miracle herself), but because it has been one year since the disaster that struck her family led to a miracle and taught us so much about the abundant love of God.

For those who have not read the story here before, her Daddy went to the hospital with what he thought was the flu and a pulled hamstring. It turned out to be necrotising fasciitis –flesh eating disease. After surgery his blood pressure crashed and he experienced multiple organ failure. He was on total life support and bleeding out. Privately, a team of highly skilled physicians treating him gave him 0% chance of survival. One of them said, “If this guy survives it will be the biggest miracle I have ever seen.”

Our daughter’s Facebook posts, intended to save time and answer friend’s questions, went viral and tens of thousands of people around the world joined in the effort to pray for him. On Good Friday last year he bled into his lungs and his condition was so unstable he couldn’t be moved across the hall for more surgery, so it had to be done in his room. Within half an hour of hearing the news a hundred people showed up in the hospital to pray for him (many more met in homes) and he survived that day. On Easter Sunday morning he responded to his wife’s voice and opened an eye.

Defying predictions that if he survived he would lose limbs, suffer brain damage, need dialysis indefinitely and be in rehab learning to cope with multiple disabilities for a very long time,  he was pronounced medically cleared forty days later, and ten days after that walked into his church unaided -on Pentecost Sunday. He stood and gave the sermon the week after that. One of the specialists said to another, “You know it’s a miracle that guy is alive.”

Throughout the experience we saw a demonstration of love as God raised up an army of praying people -in his room, in the waiting room, in groups in homes and in African, Mexican, and Inuit villages and churches across the country. In the process He healed the hearts of many of those people who had suffered the pain of disappointment and moved many other Christians to reconcile their differences that they might come in unity to pray for not only our son-in-law, but a broken big C Church universal. God showed us that the church is like a sleeping giant who needs healing from hidden corruption with broken dysfunctional parts that do not communicate with each other. His desire is to restore the church and see it raised up to be the influence and demonstration of love He intended.

Like Ezekiel or Hosea in the Bible whose lives were a picture of what God wanted to do, our son-in-love gave God permission to do whatever it took to get him to a place where God wanted him to be, and was willing to lay down his life for his friends, and for the church. God took him up on that offer, and while he slept in a coma, accomplished everything our son-in-love had been striving to teach others.

This past year has been quite the ride. Our son-in-love is back to playing the sports he loves and except for a bit of decreasing pain in his feet that was a side-effect of the medications, and an impressive scar that covers most of the back of his leg, is in better physical condition than before he became ill. God has been faithful and kind beyond anything we understood before.

Our little granddaughter says, “I think Jesus healed my Daddy because he knows we like to jump on him and He is good.”

With her we celebrate and sing. God is so good! This is going to be a great party.

Create a Miracle in Me

On By Charis PsalloIn Music5 Comments

dance

 

Create in me a clean, clean heart
Create in me a work of art
Create in me a miracle
Something real and something beautiful

Create a miracle in me

You’re not finished with me yet
You’re not finished with me yet
By Your power I can change, I can change
‘Cause You’re not finished with me yet

You make all things new

 

I stumbled upon this song yesterday. The lyrics sum up the theme of this blog so well. The music may not be my preferred style, but hey, I can dance to it and celebrate the goodness of God.

 

 

 

Thank you, Lord.