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 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
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)
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)
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
“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.
But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. -Jesus (Matthew 13: 16, 17 NKJV)
Many people see with their eyes. Some see with their hearts. Fewer take the time to turn, and paying attention, see and hear with the Spirit.
Photo: Heading home, Springfield Road, 5:00 p.m.
As I walked home, heading into the sunset at the end of a relatively warm February day, I was thinking about events of the past few months. I have seen so many false starts and travelled down so many fascinating, but distracting rabbit trails that these months have needed to be a time of prioritizing and realigning with what is truly important.
I love the razzle dazzle of experiences of signs and wonders beyond anything I thought I’d see in my lifetime, but signs point to something. What do they point to? This, for me, is a time of going back to the basics of the good news, and the nourishment of simple truth.
God said he has a plan and a purpose. What is it? Yesterday, a man from a place where it can be very costly to follow Christ, reminded me of a passage of scripture. It was written by John the Beloved, the man who rested his head on Christ himself at their last meal together before Jesus was crucified.
I remember how profound 1 John 5 was to me as a teenager when I first read it in a paraphrase by J.B Phillips. As one who felt like I never fit in, this gave me assurance that I belonged.
“Everyone who really believes that Jesus is the Christ proves himself one of God’s family. The man who loves the Father cannot help loving the Father’s own Son.
The test of the genuineness of our love for God’s family lies in this question—do we love God himself and do we obey his commands? For loving God means obeying his commands, and these commands of his are not burdensome, for God’s “heredity” within us will always conquer the world outside us. In fact, this faith of ours is the only way in which the world has been conquered. For who could ever be said to conquer the world, in the true sense, except the man who really believes that Jesus is God’s Son?
Jesus Christ himself is the one who came by water and by blood—not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. The Spirit bears witness to this, for the Spirit is the truth. The witness therefore is a triple one—the Spirit in our own hearts, the signs of the water of baptism and the blood of atonement—and they all say the same thing. If we are prepared to accept human testimony, God’s own testimony concerning his own Son is surely infinitely more valuable. The man who really believes in the Son of God will find God’s testimony in his own heart. The man who will not believe God is making him out to be a liar, because he is deliberately refusing to accept the testimony that God has given concerning his own Son. This is, that God has given men eternal life and this real life is to be found only in his Son. It follows naturally that any man who has genuine contact with Christ has this life; and if he has not, then he does not possess this life at all.
I have written like this to you who already believe in the name of God’s Son so that you may be quite sure that, here and now, you possess eternal life.
What is truth? The Spirit is truth.
What is God’s purpose? To give us life now and eternally.
What is his plan? Jesus. From the beginning it has been Jesus. In him alone we live and move and have our being.
If we learn nothing more, this is enough.
Charis: Subject to Change 