Monthly Archives: May 2012

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Today’s Reading: Daniel 11:1-12:13

“overflow” Daniel 11:10

You know, sometimes in life it only takes one word. One word to really hit you and knock your socks off, or maybe, there’s only one word that can describe how you’re feeling at any particular moment, right now for me that word is “overflow”. I mentioned yesterday that I am reading Max Lucado’s Safe In the Shepherd’s Arms, I recently read the section on the phrase “My cup runs over”, in the ESV it reads “my cup overflows”, and so it does! In the presence of The Enemy our heavenly Shepherd prepares a banqueting table for us, pours oil over our heads, anointing us for the work He has for us to do and to protect us from the Enemy sitting across the banquet table from us, perhaps wearing sheep’s clothing of his own, who knows! It is in that kind of a setting, at the banquet table of God in the presence of our Enemy having been anointed with oil that our cup is filled to overflowing!

In his book (pg 87) Lucado explains the symbol of the overflowing cup in David’s time. The host used it to wordlessly communicate with his guest, if their drinking cup ran low then the guest had stayed late enough into the night and it was time for them to return home. However, if the was host particularly enjoyed the guest’s company he would overfill the guest’s cup until it was flowing out over the rim of the cup and down the table! Oh my friend! God is so pleased with our company that He not only keeps our cup continually full, but continually running over the rim, down the table and onto the floor!!!

So often I have heard of this verse referring to our cup overflowing with blessings, this is how I feel right now. The cup of my heart is so filled with the joy of the Lord; I am completely overwhelmed with the gift of the task that He has set before me. To spend private time with Him every morning soaking in the Living Water of His word and then using it throughout the day to fuel my ministry of writing and sharing His word of hope with others. And honestly, I was thrilled with that! But then on top of that He added unto me the ministry of photography where nearly daily I am called to photograph yet another breathtaking scene that He has set up just for me in that moment. In the last week I have seen a double rainbow, a rainbow circling the sun, and a double sundog (a mini rainbow in the clouds next to the sun usually just before the sun sets)!!! I’ve been able to see the tiniest of insects drinking from a drop of rain on a flower, I’ve seen a perfect heart torn into the tire cover of a jeep ahead of me while driving. I’ve seen the light of the moon creating a cross with its light in the darkness night, I’ve watched my children bounding with excitement over one of the best inventions known to man – a Doritos Locos Taco from Taco Bell, I’ve seen numerous sunsets this week, all breathtaking and unique,

I’ve seen God’s creatures great and small, I’ve looked on as my husband and son sat side by side while my son entered a new era when he took his very first shot with a “real gun”. As a mother, it was terrifying and thirllling all at the same time. My eyes have watched the flowers grow and bloom with the light of the sun and the nourishment of the rain. My feet have walked a trail next to a calmly flowing river. I laughed, nice and dry, from inside the house while watching my daughter dance in the rain with her hot pink cowgirl boots, purple butterfly rain coat and Hannah Montana umbrella. I pondered the beauty of the grooves in a tree trunk… and in my face. I’ve lain on my belly in the fresh spring grass of a dear friend’s yard and been amazed at what my eyes have seen and my camera has captured!
And then last night I pulled over on the side of the road to photograph a field of yellow flowers in the setting sun when God whispers to my soul “Crossroads“. There I stood, children waiting in the car gleefully screaming “Mommy” at the top of their lungs, camera still perched in my hands having just taken a photo of the street signs, my feet planted in the middle of where two country roads intersect, the setting sun on my right and the rising moon on my left and God whispers “Crossroads“. “OK Lord” I respond, “where do we go from here? You lead the way and we’ll follow.”

The end of every day is a crossroad, that next step, the first step of the next morning, will lead you down a new path, a new road a new adventure in life. Where will it lead? Where will it go? Will you follow it? Will it be hard? Will it be painful or scary? Only God knows, and most of the time He doesn’t tell us what the road holds, He merely holds out His hand and says “Come, follow Me. Your Heavenly Shepherd who loves you more than you could ever imagine. Come. Let’s do this adventure together.”

Today’s Reading: Daniel 8:1-10:21

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed by the Lord’s goodness and how He can structure my steps in order to really wow me. This morning I drowsily got up to read today’s passages from Daniel and honestly, struggled through them. While I was impressed by the continuity of the message of the end times in all the visions within Daniel the thing that got me the most today was the ram. Last night before I went to bed I was reading Max Lucado’s Safe In the Shepherd’s Arms where he goes through the twenty-third Psalm phrase by phrase. I was reading the section on the phrase “He anoints my head with oil”. In this section Lucado explains how the shepherd uses oil on the sheep, one way is he anoints their noses to keep the flies from laying eggs in them, ew! Another way that the shepherd uses oil is on the sheep’s head, he will pour it over the rams’ heads during mating season. During this time the rams will butt heads with each other over a female. With oil on their heads it is more likely that the blows will simply glance off rather than cause injury to one another. So I went to bed thinking about rams fighting one another with oil poured over their heads. Only to wake up and read about Daniel’s vision of a ram where he describes the ram “charging westward, northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.” (8:4) Lord, what are You trying to tell me? I read the rest of the section, underlining many things and then returned to bed for a few minutes to snuggle up to my husband’s back while I prayed about what I had read. I just kept thinking about the ram, saying it over and over in my mind, “the ram, the ram, what does this mean for me Lord? Ram… ram…. ram” and slowly God started putting a picture into my mind, a picture I thought had nothing to do with the ram, I didn’t know.

The picture was of darkness, total and complete darkness. Then gradually it became a little lighter to where I could see where I was. Like Daniel in his vision defined precisely where he was in the vision, I knew precisely where I was standing in my vision. I was on highway 24 just outside of Remington Indiana almost to the intersection of interstate 65 looking to the north toward Chicago. I was standing just across from where there are a great many silver grain silos, if I were to guesstimate how many are there, I would say about ten, but I’ve never counted before. (We drive by that place often when visiting our parents in Newton county.) Next to the grain silos there is a little co-op building, an office of some sort, but I can’t remember exactly what it is. Just above the little building that looks like a house a storm began stirring in the dark air. It was small, very small, at first but began to grow and as it grew it moved further and further north toward Chicago. The larger the storm grew the more it swirled like a tornado, but this wasn’t a natural storm or a natural tornado, it was more fluid, more real somehow. It was a storm of LIGHT! It was as if tiny little droplets of light were swirling in the cloudy darkness creating a tornado of light in the pitch blackness over Chicago-land. The storm never touched the ground, it just swirled over the ground in the darkness, getting closer and closer to it until it almost touched but then began swirling backward – counterclockwise – until it was almost back up into the sky. Then the alarm went off and the vision was broken off by the buzzing of yet another day taking off.

To say the least I am perplexed at this vision and it’s darkness. Yet thrilled by the storm of light and the fact that it somehow has something to do with me, considering that I had just asked God “what does this mean for me Lord?” In writing this vision down I am amazed at many of the similarities between Daniel’s vision and my own! The exact location of our visions being known; in his vision the goat that came to oppose the sheep came from the west and never touched the ground, my tornado of light never touched the ground. Yet interestingly enough to me, it almost seems as though my vision is the opposite of Daniel’s in this aspect as well. A ram is a sheep, which would represent God’s faithful; while a goat is representative of an unfaithful people, (see Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats) the ram is the one in charge and until the goat comes and defeats him – unfaithful conquering the faithful. In my vision light is most definitely representative of God, and I am going to assume that because it was little drops of light – much like stars, some larger and brighter than others – that they represented God’s people (“we reflect God’s light” “we are to live like stars in the darkness”). And the darkness, of course would represent evil in general. Although the light never touched the ground, it most certainly was penetrating the darkness and bringing light to the world where it was – light/faithful conquering the darkness/unfaithful.

While I have sat on this vision all day, this is all the farther I have gotten in the interpretation, yet I am still thrilled by the end result. Light conquering the darkness by multiplying and bringing more droplets of glittering, star-like light to the darkness of this world, I’LL TAKE IT!!!!!

So what did God speak to you today through His word?

Morning Prayer: Come Holy Spirit; open my eyes so that I may see You clearly, open my ears so that I may hear You soundly, open my mind so that I may understand You more, open my heart so that I may love You fiercely, open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly. Come Holy Spirit; fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Today’s Reading: Daniel 5:1-7:28

This morning I have been smitten with the beauty of the LORD surrounding me. Yesterday was gloomy and dark as thunderous showers passed through one after another filling the streets with splashing puddles and my heart with joy at each roll of thunder. Each one like the boom of a Godly voice singing in chorus with nature’s song of praise; I love rainy days like that! But this morning, the photographer rose up in me with the sun! There is NOTHING like drops of rain sitting prettily upon delicate flower petals sparkling like diamonds as they reflect the sun’s glorious light! These days we often think of rain as less of a blessing and more of a curse, or in the least a hindrance. “Rain, rain, go away come again another day!” we chanted as youths and may even today teach our own children to sing along. But that’s not how God sees the rain; not at all. Rain is critical to a plant’s development, without rain there would be no food, without food there would be no life! Rain is a tremendous blessing in the life of a believer!

Like little drops of diamond upon the delicate petals of our soul the hard moments in our lives come to cleanse us from the things that hinder us from becoming more intimate with our Heavenly Husband. Yesterday, in Daniel we read one of my all time favorite stories in the Bible, the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. I have written about it before (in Fire of Affliction) so I won’t go into detail again, but the rain is just like that firey furnace that instantly burned off the cords that bound the godly men but never touched the clothes that they were wearing – not even with the smell of smoke! So is with the cleansing rain, it removes the dirt that we see upon ourselves and helps us to live lives that honor God. Lives that point to Him. Lives of beauty and passion.

This morning I peered out my front door to wave goodbye to my husband as he jumped into his truck and rumbled off to work. Suddenly, my eye was captured by a patch of yellow irises, tall and proud, and I set my mind to photograph them at my first opportunity. I carted my son off to school, pulled the car back into the driveway and promptly and purposefully strode across the street to the neighbor’s yard where these pristine flowers stood at the crossroads of our main street and a gravel alleyway. They may have bloomed before yesterday’s rain, I’m guessing that they had, but I certainly hadn’t noticed them until this morning as the first rays of morning sun struck their pale yellow faces lighting them up with a radiance that I simply couldn’t ignore or resist. Their beauty was striking, but what immediately caught my eye was not the flowers, or the absolutely breathtaking beauty of the rain droplets sparking in the now bright morning sun, it was the flies! There on the flower petals were flies, big and small, drinking from the water droplets on the flowers!!! I’ve never seen such a thing! I mean, I’ve always assumed that the bugs drank somehow, but I’ve never actually seen them do it up close before! And with my camera I was able to actually zoom in and see them closer than with my naked eye. It was fascinating! So through a little bit of fighting with the auto-focus on my camera and a lot of pleading with Jesus to “help me get this shot!” so that you too could see what I was seeing I was finally able to get a picture of a gnat drinking a drop of water from the leaf of a future flower in the garden. As I was taking the pictures I was amazed with how God structured my steps this morning. First, by pointing the flowers out to me from afar He drew my attention to them through the light of the Holy Spirit and the morning rays of sun. Then, He brought me closer to them, camera in tow, in order to feast on the sight of the sun in the water only to show me something that I had never seen before. A sight that I never would have been able to see from behind my closed door!

My friends, every morning I pray for God to open every part of me that I can think of that could be closed to Him, I then ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill all those places with Himself, His Holy Fire. And then I feast on the Word of God through our daily reading of the Bible. Every morning I feast at the Table of Communion with Jesus through His Word. And it is through His word that He strengthens and fortifies me, He speaks to me in those moments and because of those opening moments first thing in the morning I am more open to Him and His gentle but firm leading throughout the day. Because I have prayed daily for God to open me up, to see HIM clearly and hear HIM soundly, to understand HIM more and to love HIM fiercely, to give to HIM generously and to receive from HIM humbly I DO! I am, for the first time in my life, seeing Him clearly! I am seeing His light and His wonder and His goodness! I have spent so much time in the gloomy dreary days of my life knowing that God is good and experiencing Him through the rainy moments of life, all the while missing those moments of wonder during the morning after the rain. God is good ALL the time! In Him there is NO darkness! LIFE has dark moments, it just does, but those dark moments help us to appreciate the morning after. Those dark days place into stark contrast the bright mornings where The Son is shining upon the rain that came to cleanse and causes it to shine like diamonds upon the delicate petals of the flower of our heart, opening oh so beautifully toward the Lord’s caress and loving care through the garden of our relationship with Him. He is the gardener, the One who tends to us oh so carefully. He is the One who comes in and firmly but carefully rips those weeds out of our lives, the ones that choke us and rob us of the nourishment that only He can provide us.

Yes my Beloved, He cares for us so tenderly. He allows the rain to fall upon our heads, but that is certainly no reason to turn our faces away from His attentions, but rather turn them all the more toward His radiant light in order to allow its rays to shine down upon us in order to use that rain to reflect that marvelous Light onto those around us. Perhaps in the hopes to draw them nearer to us so that they may see something they’ve never seen before… God working in their own lives. And He uses US to do that! Now, how awesome is that?

Today’s Reading: Daniel 3:1-4:37

God’s been saying a lot to me lately about communion. And what’s been interesting to me is that nothing has been overly obvious but rather it has all been rather veiled. A sermon here and there talking about communion, every once in a while a scripture will come to mind having to do with the Lord’s Supper, and then last night He really kicked things into high gear for me. Yesterday I wrote about Jesus holding out the cup to His disciples as a marriage proposal, then shortly thereafter my husband and I left for our Monday night Bible Study at church where we had our last meeting for the season and therefore had a “last supper” together where we even took communion. Which, I was simply thrilled about since I had just finished writing about how beautiful of a gesture that was. Then after we got home, finished homework, put the kids to bed there was a load of laundry that HAD to get put into the dryer before we went to bed so while I was waiting for that to get done I finished reading The Shack. In the very end of the book the author describes the main character, Mack, having communion with Jesus, God the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet there was no ceremony, no ritual, just a simple meal between friends was shared. They ate the loaf and drank the wine together. Yet the message still didn’t hit me full force until this afternoon after struggling all morning to try and write something, anything and NOTHING was coming out right. (I can always know when I’m writing what God wants me to write, because when it’s right it just flows out and my fingers can hardly keep up. Which is what they’re doing now.) Finally, I spent a little time talking to a friend of mine and sharing with her some of the revelations that God has been revealing to me through His word, even when they so rarely directly apply to what I’m reading on that day! Through talking to her I began to realize that I was trying to write the things that I thought God wanted me to say, so I decided to stop doing that. J In the midst of our call I got a call from the school, never a good sign! My son had somehow managed to miss the bus! In almost four full years he has not once missed the bus before! So I broke off our call, grabbed my daughter and dodged the raindrops to get to our car to pick up my son. The street was beautifully filled with puddles perfect for driving through and splashing, drawing out oooohhhs and aaaaahhhhs from the back seat as the water cascaded away from the tires and onto the grass on the side of the road. A perfect break from writer’s block! We came back into the house, I set my children to doing their chores and visited the bathroom where I briefly picked up my new “bathroom book” A Thousand Gifts and low and behold what was the author Ann Voskamp talking about? EUCHARIST! (The Lord’s Supper, Communion!) I shook my head in dismay, Lord, what are You trying to tell me???

And then it finally hit me, as Ann was talking about the meaning of Eucharist and how it is ongoing, perpetual, like, all the time and God finally brought all the elements together in a beautiful masterpiece in my mind, THE TABLE! It’s all about the table!

You see, for the longest time now I’ve been struggling with all the ritual of Holy Communion. I’ve been struggling with it because Jesus and I have Communion almost every single day. In fact there are many days when we have Communion at every meal! You see, it was Ann’s explanation of the oh-so-common elements that God chose to be our Communion elements that helped connect all the dots for me, it’s a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. Bread and juice, a grain and a fruit, my friend how often do we eat a grain and a fruit in the same meal? ALL THE TIME! And that is how Jesus and I have been having communion all these long winter months, I will sit down to eat and then look at what I have placed on the plate in front of myself and the Holy Spirit will strike me with the realization of what I have done! There will inevitably be a grain, usually bread, and a fruit and I will look up at the “empty” chair before me and say “Well Hi there Jesus! Thanks for joining me for lunch!” Now, don’t get me wrong, I definitely enjoy the pomp and circumstance of the ritual communion at church on the first Sunday of every month, but when I’ve got people telling me that it’s a sin for someone who is not an ordained pastor to give communion, well my feathers start to get a little ruffled. I’m not an expert on the Bible by ANY means, but I do know that that’s not something Jesus said at the last supper to His disciples when HE was doing the first communion.

Jesus said simply “Do this in remembrance of Me“. Common, simple, un-ritualistic He said “don’t forget to remember Me”. Because He knew that we would tend to forget Him! I spend the majority of my day studying and writing and talking about Him and yet I forget about Him!!! Obviously I’m not forgetting to talk about Him, but it’s kinda rude to sit at the same table with someone and talk about them to everyone else at the table without ever talking TO them, isn’t it? Thank You Jesus for being so patient with us! Communion, as defined online by Merriam and Webster, is an intimate fellowship or rapport: communication. Now for the last few days as I’ve been describing a relationship with Jesus to you, I’ve mentioned over and over again the idea of the kind of relationship where you’re just two friends sitting across the table from one another sharing a cup of joe and chatting about life with one another. When reading Ann’s point about the common-ness of the elements of communion and the concept of communion itself I literally shouted “THE TABLE!” This relationship with Jesus is centered around a dinner table! One, that I might digress a bit to point out would inevitably be made from the wood of a tree… like a tree of Life perhaps… the remnants of a cross…) This table where the common, everyday elements of bread and wine are shared between two jovial friends sharing the day’s events together in communion or intimate fellowship or rapport. (*wink*)

Sometimes, we simply make things harder on ourselves than we really have to. Communion; intimate fellowship, a marriage proposal and acceptance, a simple meal shared between friends at a table – any table, Communion = time spent with God. Hallelujah!

Peace be multiplied to you! (Daniel 4:1)