4.25.2011

How can I not trust Him?

"Daily I turn my gaze in distrust. Daily I remember the Jesus who already washed clean this mess and I fall to my knees, sorrowful and repentant. How can I not trust? And He reminds me that I must die with Him – not just that once but every single day – choosing to throw off the distrust and walk with Him in the newness of life. Daily. Hourly. Sometimes seemingly every five minutes."

(Katie in Uganda. Read the whole Journey here.)

4.16.2011

And He shall strengthen your heart

I sit on my bed. All is quiet around me. I am so overwhelmed at the kindness of our great God. I am faithless, yet He is faithful.

So many, many things - I can't even begin to tell you. (Some I actually can't tell you. Not now, at least.)
He has done so many unimaginable things! How could I have ever doubted His strength and His ability to do such? I pray He would give me of such little faith more faith to trust in the Ever Faithful One.

Psalm 31:19-24:
"Oh, how great is Your goodness,
Which You have laid up for those who fear You,
Which You have prepared for those who trust in You
In the presence of the sons of men!

You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence
From the plots of man;
You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion
From the strife of tongues.

Blessed be the LORD,
For He has shown me His marvelous kindness in a strong city!

For I said in my haste,
“I am cut off from before Your eyes”;
Nevertheless You heard the voice of my supplications
When I cried out to You.

Oh, love the LORD, all you His saints!
For the LORD preserves the faithful,
And fully repays the proud person.

Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart,
All you who hope in the LORD."

4.11.2011

Memories of Spring

Why is it that I always feel the urge to write late at night? Why does my mind work best in those quiet moments just before I fall asleep?
These questions are left unanswered. I can't tell you why this is - but tonight I'm taking advantage of it. (That, and I can't sleep. It's that Sunday afternoon nap, I tell you. And the bug buzzing around my room probably has something to do with it.)

It seems to me that memories are best triggered by smell. The sweet fragrance of the patches of yellow and white honeysuckle bushes wafts through the air. At the smell, I remember Springs past: running barefoot over the soft, green grass, bouncing, flipping, jumping on that old, worn trampoline while the metal springs whine and screech in rhythm, or playing as a pilgrim in a lonely, consecrated cabin in the prairies, or a passenger on a boat, or a superhero with super strength, or the power of flight or X-ray vision, fighting the good fight in an old warehouse -- all from the real protection of the four walls of the wooden tree house which took on many forms back in its prime.
I thought of those soft giggles of dear, little friends, the wild, silly games of Tag, the enticing fear of slipping from the safety of a wood plank, the fence, or trampoline onto the "lava" ground. I saw the bright sunshine cast its rays on familiar faces, and of course, I remembered the piles and piles of sweet, luscious honeysuckles we plucked from the bushes and sucked and sipped on until there was not one more drop to be sucked or sipped.

What is it about childhood memories that is so bittersweet? Perhaps it's sweet to revisit happy, simple times and places, but bittersweet to come to realize these are times and places we will never again live in.

4.02.2011

Eudora Welty on reading

"I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to. My mother read to me. She'd read to me in the big bedroom in the mornings, when we were in her rocker together, which ticked in rhythm as we rocked, as though we had a cricket accompanying the story. She'd read to me in the dining room on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire, with our cuckoo clock ending the story with "Cuckoo," and at night when I'd got in my own bed. I must have given her no peace. Sometimes she read to me in the kitchen while she sat churning, and the churning sobbed along with any story. It was my ambition to have her read to me while I churned; once she granted my wish, but she read off my story before I brought her butter. She was an expressive reader. When she was reading "Puss in Boots," for instance, it was impossible not to know that she distrusted all cats.
It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them - with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them."

(Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings)