asheville trip

 

Reminiscing trip to the Arboretum and Aunt Jackies house

 

art show in Raleigh. hoorah for Emily

emilys art piece at a show

 

Hands In! Hands Down!

 Facts and Facets

Heirs together of the grace of life?  God’s Word

If heirs together what are the facets that create the dynamic of inheritance.   My gift from Ben on 40 years together was a faceted mirror with goodies loaded atop them that were historically significant.  My own engagement ring got lost at Remington Street the day that I took it off to wash his mother’s hair.  I don’t remember the exact number of corners of the top of my own diamond, but I often see the tops of the buildings in Charlotte and imagine a group of women volleyball players putting their hands in the huddle and the diamonds represent the determination to defeat the world, the flesh and the devil in the eternal match!  The Eternal Match!

Mother’s in the Spiritual Israel have a calling to represent Christ to their children and focus on preserving the knowledge of God against all enemies, domestic and abroad who would seek to silence and nullify the influence of the Church in the generation they are called to protect.  Daniel wasn’t a woman, but he is the example of this because his call to preserve through an onslaught of godlessness is parallel to our own generation.  The exaltation of polytheism and the exaltation of idolization of humanism and humanity are some other enemies.  Committed relationships and women who support them are part of the eternal facets which are recognized in Scripture.   Diamonds themselves are not represented in scripture as such, but that is the symbol that has been passed down to our recognition.  Self actualization and individual rights stand as goliath against the knowledge of God passed down from generation to generation and they mimic the voice of the church, oftentimes stealing the language of redemption to validate their lies.  I will, I will says the devil.  His self actualization is our model to follow.  Eve followed ignorantly.  She thought God had some secret he was saving for those who found their own way.  All we like sheep follow her in disobedience and then God saves us.  Emulators of family project their wills and super impose their images for God upon the family.  They cannot stand. Government attempts to superimpose it’s image upon the family creating a democratic or monopoly of individual autocrats in place of parts of the body.  The image that God has given us has a head and parts that function interdependently.  The image that the devil has given us eats and drinks of itself and is self absorbed and self actualized and actualizing.  I will survive! Says the devil to God.  I will fight.  I will keep fighting against you and the family until “SHE is “saved through the child bearing” and until They inherit the grace of “LIFE”.  As long as they can be distracted from that,  I am good with that says he.

What's Love got to do with it?

 Moab is my washpot!  

What do we wash in Moab?

Where did we come from?

Where is our great awakening?

What do we represent and how do we reflect the image of God in our blackness and in our Moabidity?

I have laid before the Lord for so many years.  Searching history for some dynamic moment to have been documented where repentance and faith and great changes of life and situation were memoired for me to place in front of my children to give great credence to the work of Scripture in our heritage.  I wept before God. I own my Christian heritage and anyone and anywhere those whose testimonies were to the glory of God were my food for setting before my children as their spiritual ancestries.  They accepted it and made few complaints for the most part.  

I wasn’t content with reading about white tears from the coal miners and South American revivals, while knowing that there were many many atrocities at the same time that were going on in my own people group.  Spiritual awakenings, I had seen personally and been privy to some in my own present day.  That wasn’t contenting me.  I needed a historic documentation.  I lament the African participation in the slaying of the innocents in Moses day.  It made me historically sad.  Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar, not to mention many other Darkly colored villains of Scripture scared me about my own cultural proclivities.  What are the purveyors of the histories that I have learned and purported trying to make me feel about myself and my identity.  I am black.  I am not as privileged.  I mustn't be trusted with authority lest I get puffed up like my ancient counterparts, etc.,etc.

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.  God loves your blackness and has always had a wonderful plan for your beauty and humanity.,etc.,etc.

I am not sure that I have accurately expressed that to my children.  Your body type and your color and your humanity is not less than or an afterthought of our Lord.  He planned that through Christ all of the atrocities that have gotten us to this place in history will be dealt with in His mighty equality.  She shall be saved through the childbearing, whatever that means.  If they continue…?

Instead of lamenting your womanhood and your blackness as not being recognized by your surrounding culture, celebrate the image of God that is recognized in scripture and see what God says that He will do to the valley.  Lift it up.  What he will do to the invisible.  Shine a light on it.  I have water on Moab right now and I have my shoe over a group of people that seem invisible or vulnerable in the history of the world as a whole.  This sickness is not because they are more wicked than any other but that the works of God might be manifest through Him and that His glory might  be seen in the foolish things of this world bringing to naught the things that are exalted.  

That NO FLESH might glory!

To God be the glory!  Our beauty is not something to flaunt, but a gift to be cherished.  Our expression is not to compete with the Lord, but to Thank God for!   

Some of us are not as gifted as Tina Turner was, but she gave us a goal in our marital love to win over our husbands.  That is a type of cleansing that only the Moabites and those who imitate them can know.

Coveting true health for my soul!

Learning to refresh and recreate yourself, on vacation.  Women’s rights and women’s health and women’s issues must include mental health breaks and emotional support of one another.  The emotional support to give eachother a nudge and comfortable affirmation that personal breaks are in order, from time to time.  Often it is too late, by the time we realize that we need a break.  Like minded women and service oriented women must give eachother space to recreate.

Teaching women to love their husbands and love their children has been my theme for these 40 years of marriage, sometimes to the loss of my health and sanity.  Teaching women to use some of their time to learn to thrive in the unswerving environment of constant contact with work and world is a somewhat more difficult task for me.  Always connected to the phone and internet can become like a 24 hour nursing schedule which only a mother of a newborn usually has to endure.  Always on call for this or that item.  If you are not careful your care of self can go on the back burner if not in the trash.

I was reaffirmed by some photos of women reading and lounging in Nantucket.  This is a place I have never been to, but it doesn’t have to be Nantucket to be a place for refreshing.  Put away the cell phone and the news and the internet.  Maybe not the computer, so that you can write what you learn from God on your journey to the inner sanctum of your soul.  Where is my soul?  Where is my heart?  Where are my affections fixed?

We think because we make it to church on Sunday and pray and read that means all is well.  It may well mean that, but it may mean that you are a good faker and more attached to the schedule of the usual than the true refreshing of attachment to God.  Lord, forgive me for placing my reputation for godliness above the true relationship with you.

Seen praying?  Seen Praising?  Are you? Am I like the ones who delight in the being seen as a worshiper when my heart is all out of sorts.  I must dig into the recesses of my soul and find out.  I must get alone with God to know if that is the case?  Healing is in your Wings, dear Lord, but if my eyes are on my bellybutton and on my aches and pains of heart and body, I am not reaching for the hem of your garment in your presence.  How many women were well in body and didn’t reach out for Jesus?  The need created the impulse to press into Jesus.  I must be aware of my need to touch his hem for healing.  

Heal me, Oh Lord!  It’s me, It’s me, standing in the need of prayer. And refreshing and healing and heath!

New York times article

Christmas In Connecticut

 Here I sit in my sunny living room on a Sunday afternoon meditating on the generosity of God to a sinner such as I.  That is not hyperbole.  

It sounds surreal that God would allow us so much of His mercy and grace.  It is not like Christmas in Connecticut a fake story. It is reality!

I haven't grown any citrus trees, like Martha Stewart.  My praise and worship has grown and withered and grown and I am grateful for the seasoned expectation that I have of the presence of God, here in my early 60's.  

We are here in Huntersville, North Carolina and the cultural presence of God has been startlingly awestriking to me for these years of living here.  Common Grace and fear of God seen in the regular living of life.  Not an armored defensive faith but a settled expectation of God's pruning and fertilizing.  I have learned much.

putting on the whole armor of God is against our personal propensities to sin, not against our neighbors.

"Jesus ready stands to save you, full of mercy and love and power"

The beauty of the Church doing it's work in the community is beautiful.  We should expect it. In our souls and in our communities we should expect to see the growth and blessings of the church in action.

My father used to say that in an unbelieving way.  "If the church is so powerful, why are the drug dealers all up and down that neighborhood?"  I never knew how to answer him.  I never knew how to defend my church that I loved and sang so triumphantly about.

The Church's one foundation?

I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord?

What Sacred Fountain Yonder Springs?

We Never Need be Vanquished?

He stood as a constant reminder that we were inept in our duty to our community there.  Sin was rampant, but I never thought to say to him that could he imagine how bad it might be if that church weren't on every corner?

Not until He was gone could I see that.  One of the deacons gave his testimony, who was my father's age and told how he ran in the streets and sold drugs and might have been killed and a praying woman who became his wife helped deliver him from himself.  I hadn't imagined deacon So and so as being my Dad's age and having run with him.

It was latently consoling.  Too late to share with my one missionfield, but not too late to comfort my heart.  He was gone and God is sovereign I couldn't imagine any other way than the way it had gone.

Now there are many great and shining lights of churches in New York and they have done many wondrous things throughout my city and I am grateful to have seen neighborhoods and communities transformed and lives renewed, but saddened that my dad wasn't there to see his pittance of a tithe that he put in the offering plate grow to a great and beautiful cathedral.

Jesus, the powerful name is enough, but with what measure we engage ourselves to aspire and exalt ourselves on resumes and in articles about us.  We find superlative words to exalt ourselves and yet we only refer to He who built the lofty skies as YOU.  I am inept!

Where's my helmet?

  Put on the whole armor of God!

How many days do we go out into the battlefield of the Lord with pieces of our armor on and pieces of our armor left at home?

I know that I hate it when I get caught with my pain medication in my pocketbook.  I step on my arthritic knee and it says, "nope". I am not going another step.   I often imagine myself strewn on the floor of the Commons.  Why didn't I anticipate my recurring pain?  Worse yet, is getting hit by the fiery darts of the enemy of our souls.   He targets you with your own knowledge of scripture.  He knows you left your helmet of salvation home today and it will do its most significant damage to your soul, if not catapult you right down to the deepest hell.

Jesus has given you instructions and you ignored them.  Put your coat on!  It is snowing!  Put your earmuffs on you will catch cold and there you are on your deathbed lamenting your own ignorant sad negligence concerning your health.  More sad the condition of the soul in hell who has had a closet full of God's Complete Armor and left it home in the heat of battle.

Eternal, is the sense of lamenting.

I think about it daily concerning myself!

Lest I be a castaway