100 blog posts

I've got lots to tell you!

I have written approximately 100 blog posts this summer. Trouble is...they are all in my head and have not been transposed via the keyboard. There are musings on faith, flowers, fish, friendship, funny stuff, and of course, stories of my feathered friends and all their babies I've been following. Good bloggers post daily. I admit I am not in that league.

Fresh blog posts are of course far more superior on current topics relevant to the moment. They have an important place in many people's lives and I read many of them when I can. But life is meant to be lived and God bless you if you do, but I am just not one to carry technology with me to record my posts within moments....or inform followers of my every movement... or to continually read what equates to text messages from others. I get enough text messages from my kids asking for the car and money. The thought of my head buried in a Blackberry or laptop throughout an entire day for purposes other than work exhausts me. No, the only tweets coming from my house are those coming from the trees. Good grief I sound so old and crotchety! Maybe I'll be hip when I'm retired and I'll twitter from my rocking chair. I feel a blog post coming on about what would be contained in those tweets......

Anyways.......it's summer. I spend as much of it outdoors as I can (while my housework is abandoned) and while I am gardening and birding and photographing and reading and visiting, I am blogging away in my head. When I should be sleeping, I am composing a post and hoping I can remember my thoughts when I get to actually write it out. If my thoughts don't all get recorded until weeks later....so be it. Besides, I spend hours at my workplace on the computer (because I have to) and can feel the tennis elbow becoming more pronounced... so I try to rest it when at home. (That's a lie. I do gardening and end up making it worse).

Soon enough the days will shorten and more time will be spent indoors and I will catch up on my postings. Come the first snow day, watch for 2-3 posts per day for weeks on end. And they will all remind you of the summer.

Since I'm finally posting something here, I might as well throw in my thoughts for today which are on a more serious note. We heard a message from a guest speaker at church today who reminded us that God works strangely, sovereignly, and sloooowly. Example: the life of Joseph. His life was a maze from the time he received his technicolour coat from his dad, and each event made no sense on it's own. Where was God when everything was going wrong?? Yet everything was being beautifully orchestrated from an Israelite, to a slave, to a prisoner, to a Prime Minister. Kind of like right now during this heat wave we're experiencing during summer, the autumn is actually slowly working behind the scenes, preparing itself to burst upon us - you just can't see it. It is apparent that it's God's nature to work sovereignly....slowly, often unseen... and not understood by us. We live our lives by clocks and calendars - they don't seem to be a factor to God.

Life is like a big page of that connect-the-dots game. You don't see the big picture until you're just about through. The speaker mentioned that her daughter is bad for leaving phone messages that she has something really exciting to relate, but...."I'll tell you later!". God leaves us waiting...hanging....and we have to trust Him....when we don't think we are getting answers...and when everything seems to be going against us.

He'll tell us later.

There IS a big plan.....but I want to look for God in the little things....to learn about His nature and His ways.....and intentionally love and worship Him.

I was musing on these thoughts this evening when I went back into the recesses of my garden to prune a few rosebush branches (pruning is a whole other blog post of spiritual thoughts...). Suddenly my dog started frantically barking on the back deck. She gets disturbed if we go in the house without her - she needs to be with us all the time.

She had lost sight of me and obviously thought I had gone in the house.

I peered around the pear tree that I was in behind and called her name. Nikki! NIKKI! The poor dog ran from one end of the deck to the other looking for me and couldn't see me. She scurried to the gate to look down the driveway as I continued to call her name....but she couldn't see me. Back up on the deck she tried to listen to where my voice was coming from but she just couldn't see me and was becoming a little frantic to find me.

Finally, I stepped farther out of the garden and called her name once more. That did it. Recognition. The arthritic dog came bounding down the stairs, tail wagging and excitedly ran up to me for reassurance that I was indeed there. I had been there all along. As Nikki ran towards me I saw the very real picture of what I had just been musing on. I love my dog and I savoured her reaction as she lovingly ran to me.

Just because she couldn't see me didn't mean I had left her. I was there all along...my love for her still intact and unwavering. I hadn't left her. I never will.

My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8,9 - The Bible

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
I will not forsake them.

Isaiah 42:16 - The Bible

Where are my glasses????

My all-time favourite comic strip is ZITS - I check it daily. My favorite is Jeremy looking at his dad who clearly has 5 pairs of glasses on his head and asking "Where are my glasses??". Meanwhile, his mother's purse is slung over her shoulders and she's desperately asking, "Has anyone seen my purse??". Jeremy shakes his head and mumbles that he couldn't WRITE stuff like this. I have vivid memories of feeling like Jeremy the teenager in this comic when I was his age, but now....I'm afraid of becoming like my parents. Where DID I put my coffee cup??

It's too funny. And the older I get, the more scary it is that we have moments when things are right there in front of our eyes and we don't see them. Now I don't mean to get all spiritual about a comic strip, but on the other hand.....my previous sentence could be a rather profound statement in the world of faith. Follow me for a minute. The existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved. Faith is as much required by an atheist, as a believer in God. (In my humble opinion, an atheist needs much, much more faith). But I just happen to be convinced that the 5 pairs of reading glasses are right there on the head...and the purse is right there slung around the shoulders...but we don't see....Him....the Creator.

So why does one person not see Him at all, and yet I see Him in everything? (That is not meant as a criticism - it is simply a statement).

I purchase fresh flowers every two weeks for my home because I am astounded by every petal and stamen and colour of a beautifully created living thing.

I put out bird seed daily to watch amazing creatures that rival any airplane fly about and live in the incredible order of nature.

I see the complex nature of the soil and insects and plants and seeds and bulbs in my gardens, as the seasons turn...always without fail.

The stars and planets, sun and moon - all perfectly placed to allow our existence.

I simply have to think and read about the awesome DNA and complete orderly systems that run and recharge themselves within my own body to be humbly awestruck by the Creator.

You could write libraries to fill the universe on all of these amazing 'creations'.

I cannot muster enough faith - not even the size of a mustard seed - to ever believe it just happened - no matter how many gazillion years you give it to have evolved.....from nothing. I see a Designer everywhere I look.....while others ask, "Has anyone seen God around here?"

Do I always 'feel' Him? Nope. Do I always 'hear' Him? Nope.

There have been times in my life when I have gone through depression and felt absolutely no emotion towards anything. Nothingness. Horrible nothingness. For a very long time.

Did I still trust God? Absolutely.

At those times in my life I would wake up feeling sick and couldn't even face the day, so I reached for my Bible before my feet hit the ground, immersed myself in it - and chose to believe that God was still there in the nothingness, caring for me. The description of His never changing character and unconditional love held me. I felt nothing, but trusted.

And that is what I believe God looks for from us....sometimes even tests it in us.

Trust.... in the moments we don't feel, hear or see Him. Faith.

Is that stupid? Is it a crutch? Is it just psychological?

You are welcome to believe that. But apparently we need to be like little children, with childlike faith - not like rocket scientists. Oh, we don't throw our brains out the window...but there will always be stuff we have no answers for. Like the child who just trusts Dad, even when he doesn't understand everything yet.

The thing that cements it for me is the person of Christ.

The story is that God himself became one of us in the person of Christ, laid His life flat out for me whether I cared or not, when He didn't have to.

That act of mysterious, unrivalled love provided me with the chance to know Him and be with Him when I'm done with this life. That event in history that we are soon to celebrate, screams really loudly to me that He's here. Reeeeeeeeally loudly. In fact, that event provides all the proof and assurance I need that God is alive and well. He gave all that He had, and all that He could. The rest is up to me.

I don't think He really needs to prove anything else to me. Do I believe He is the Saviour or do I walk away?

There's a wonderful mystery in humbling myself and trusting Christ. It's no longer a decision my mind has made....it becomes deeply spiritual. As I respond in love and profound gratitude to Him, His Spirit brings His words alive. The Bible that could otherwise be a history or theological book to me, now has life within its pages and it changes me as I respond. Christ refers to Himself as the bride of His church. Would we ever marry someone to only have an intellectual relationship with? No. It moves from the mind to the heart and into the spirit. His love and care for me is personal. I'm forgiven and I'm loved by the One who knows me.

He could choose to send angels or things to 'convince' me that He's real - but then I would not need faith, nor would I respond with a heartfelt love.

He could have made me a robot to force a response to Him, but I believe He gave Himself completely to win me, and now He yearns for a willing, loving, trusting response in return. Then it is truly a deep, loving, spiritual bond between us. It's the trusting that seems to invoke His response to me.

The more years I live, the more I really do see Him in everything, hear Him in my spirit and know that His Spirit lives in me. I can't possibly be convinced otherwise.

It has nothing to do with how I feel or the circumstances in my life. It's more than can be understood or figured out with the mind - my heart and spirit is engaged.

At times, it's overwhelming that I'm allowed to live in this place. Who can understand that God would want anything to do with me? It's beyond comprehension.

It's called joy - even when I'm not happy. It holds me during the rough times when the faith gets tested again. Should I ever plunge again into the darkness of depression, He will still hold me.

I read an article by Dale Fincher who told of an encounter with a dying man who pointed to the sea at sunset and asked "Where's God?" Funny how one can look at a sunset and ask that, while others are overwhelmed and see Him everywhere in the beautiful painted sky. What do you see? I'm going to have a look at that comic strip again. Question to self: In the light of what I've just rambled about.....which generation do I now think I identify with?

Addendum: I drafted most of this blog Saturday night. Sunday morning I was driving to church alone as my husband was called in to work. The song below (What Can I Do, by Paul Baloche) kicked in on our CD player and simply voiced all I was trying to say above. I cranked it and drove through misty eyes to church. To some, it's just a song. To millions who truly know their Saviour, it's a hearts cry. Listen with your heart....