Monday, December 24, 2012

Paradox`s story

Once upon a time . . . . there was a story.


And the world is filled with stories: some true, some tale. And the stories we embrace indent our soul and mould our destiny. 

 

Because the stories we hear, and the stories we tell, live bigger than us; and whether we know it or not, our belief ushers us into the story we accept. 


And in the utter end, there are only two stories we will tell, and we will live. One story says the world is chaos, and we alone must muddle and reign and suffer and rule; that we are all there is, whether our best or worst, and our only hope is ourselves. 


The other story says the world is chaos, but the One Who made the world enters the chaos, and redefines it with His reality; and we are not left alone to our own devices, because someone from beyond us transcends our noise and makes sense of our senseless pain. 


And our lives echo the stories we believe. That’s why we have to know what story we trust, and what story we live. Because to settle into an alone story is tragic, and to live as though there is no story is to not live at all.

We were made to live in a together story . . . and that’s the only reason we can believe it. 


Close your eyes, and see it. Quiet your heart, and hear it. Still the clamour, and enter in . . .


This is the mystery, the paradox of grace. This is our story.  


With help from Google images

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Glory musings, part one



The angelic herald echoes like ­­a sweet haunting, a gentle annual pulse to set our pace.

And it comes like a taunting, when our hard core realities reel chaotic, and blow shredded and shattered like forgotten rubbish: its synthetic rustle hissing through the breeze’s song, resilient ugly tendrils marring the broken scene. The second law of thermodynamics seemed efficient enough for our undoing; why add this man-made grief? 

Isn’t natural pain enough? Why the unnatural weight too? We could barely endure the first, but crumple—utterly undone—under the second’s insidious slashes.

There must be different degrees of knowing, an ebbing, layered sphere of atmospheres we breathe, entering one and leaving another so seamlessly that we live unconscious to the power we inhale. To know you are helpless and hurt, a needy beggar, and to know—the sheer, unreserved, raw state of your reality—the atmospheric conversion.

It’s not just being a country shepherd, a noble, honest task where you content yourself and thank God you can sleep under the stars. No, it’s the outcast, the scruffy thieves and chronic liars . . .locked out at night and avoided in the day. The shepherd: excluded from court cases, their word not worth being heard; shunned in polite and even normal society, their association not worth the potential business or communal risk. Living honest, lowly, and poor wasn’t humble enough: the association of others’ misdeeds hangs irreconcilable on you, a weight unbearable, unavoidable . . .the intolerable synthetic pain.

And there must be varying degrees of living, potentials of capacity we have not plumbed yet, realms high and deep, primed for the expanse of the soul, prepared for possibility, like the echo of a promise.


And doesn’t GLORY pull us deeper, higher, real-er? Doesn’t it create the environment for potential? The capacity for knowing, for living, for joy and for pain find a harmony in the song of GLORY.

And sometimes, it takes the shattering, brutal synthetic to wake us to glory. Because constant pain grows dull, normal (even if it cripples us). But shearing pain rivets us, and makes us know that something is utterly wrong, and something is utterly Right.


And perhaps, in all this chaos, the world heaves and aches, priming for the coming of GLORY.

Friday, November 30, 2012

The smell of snow


The imperceptible shift, a slipping into place, some vast force steals in silent. And we wake to a different world, one hushed and reverent. 


Muted hues quiet the noisy orb, and while everything and everyone still screams and rushes around, the veil transfigures it all, shushing it to the background, bidding it cease striving, telling it, “Be still.”

The landscape has not changed; no blanket of snow hides the shapes of rock and tree, no blizzard winds blur our senses, no extreme temperatures threaten our endeavours . .. and yet, everything alters, because we can smell the promise.

Somehow, the pledge of snow’s arrival sets the heart to rest, and awakens it to lively dance. This paradox slips into cognisance without a syllable, and we grapple for words to describe the transformation. We inhale light and quick, wonder catching our in our breath. Yet we exhale long, the sudden revelation of beauty inviting us to pause and gaze in reverent stillness.


The mingling atmospheres of heaven and earth harmonize, their vibrations unifying. And somewhere deep in our soul, we hear the music. When nature sings clearer than our screaming, false-inflated cacophony, worlds still, and we remember. Sometimes it’s only a whisper, and don’t whispers speak louder than our bustling shouts and crazy winds?  

Words float through the calm. . .  our minds can’t quite make them out, but the heart understands. We look up. We peer beyond our own realm. We aspire soul-ish for a dream outside our experience and cognition.  And sometimes, redemption consists of quiet nods and paced breathing.



A word comes in the pregnant air, almost undetectable, completely unmistakable to those who hear it: Be still, and know that God is God.

Here we rest. Here we wait. Here we live and scurry and endeavour . . . and aspire, listening for the building echoes, watching for the consummation, remembering the promise, and the One Who made it.

Photos courtesy of google images 

Sunday, November 11, 2012

A walk to remember


I set out to discover, to find a walk for my soul, a way to remember. It’s a journey within a journey: and isn’t this how life spins us? 


Mist rises from pond’s mouth, living air sighing happy at the sight of sun, and my soul rises to breathe it. 


First lines of the day’s new song penetrate the world in shimmering rays. It’s an ancient melody, an aching ballad, a groaning hope. The aged earth sings it fresh to its Creator in this autumn, the first time for this day, the same as each day since her inception. And doesn’t the habit of mercy meet us new, and old, each day?

Dependence on fresh graces can stagnate into assumption and dullness, unless we receive eyes to see. It humbles us, making us a forever student, one who always needs more than they know. But it makes us alive, hunger beckoning us on, because we have tasted this goodness. And doesn’t grace upon grace spiral up like this, where we come around again and again to the same beauties, always new


Guidance and boundaries dot the walkway, and grace isn’t so much a tight rope to be nervously balanced as it is a fenced enclosure, in which to dance. And how often do I listen for the invitation to celebrate? 


Walnuts scatter across the path, seeds fulfilling their destiny, many of them disintegrating into fertilizer, never to realize their potential. And how many of us rot away? And how can we help it, unless we are rescued and planted? One road leads to ultimate death, the other to fruitful life. And how many lives pass through time’s ebb, never living the glory of resurrection? How many victims never get the chance to even breathe this air? How many lives snuffed out so soon, so needlessly . . . and the world can be cruel


The path winds upward, and it has to. We have to know there is something above, something more, something to dream for. It requires more energy to climb, and round the bends; and often the dullness of resignation calls louder than the pain of hope.  And don’t we have to know that there is something good ahead? The breeze tells us, the sun invites us, the path beckons us on. And isn’t the path itself a mercy


I find the long road. I turn right and follow it to the end.  It’s a raised embankment, with deep ravines on either side. And isn’t grace a highway between two ditches


The road ends sudden, cleared and built for a purpose fulfilled, and that is all. And it is enough. Some journeys end abrupt, and we cannot retain sight or use of all the paths we walk. Each leads on to another road, and if we stopped and built cities, the journey’s wonder would die. And how often do I settle for the safety of apathy, of a life so protected from pain that I lose a reason to die, and a reason to live?

I turn and retrace my steps, remembering, following back, so I can walk again, and travel further. And in remembering, we are re-made. The pieces fall into place, the melody played backwards teaches us what we could not know while questing ahead. 


And the paradox of grace tells us what we could not hear in the clamour, in the deafening pain, and the anguished silence:
“Yet I will still hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease.
Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning.
I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him.’
The Lord is good to those who depend on Him, to those who search for Him.
So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.” 
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