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Praise
God's Delicate Touch
The Living Spirit is actively involved in the lives of those who recognize and request His presence
July 02, 2006

Events in my personal life have made me aware of just how involved God is in our daily lives. Through the Holy Spirit, through hosts of angels, and all the other tools at His disposal, the Living Spirit is actively involved in the lives of those who recognize and request His presence.

If we are focused on physical things, the things we can see and touch, we may never be aware of the movements of supernatural forces, both those assisting us as well as those wanting to lead us in the wrong direction. Stories abound about “the hand on the wheel” that keeps people safe when they are unable to function on their own. Soldiers tell many tales of having their lives spared supernaturally.

Even though we don’t have miraculous supernatural experiences to relate each and every day, if we are paying attention we will notice God’s delicate touch is constantly in our lives. How many times has a slower moving vehicle slowed you just before you noticed the police car’s radar gun? “Bruce Almighty” kept asking God to give him a sign while the slow moving truck ahead of him was loaded with “road out ahead” and “stop” signs. We can all remember roadway hindrances that slowed us enough we avoided a pile-up.

There are those times when we do get the ticket or we do get into a wreck. We cannot ask, “Why, God?” when we did not recognize the many times we were protected. Either we accept Him as our daily companion during both the good and bad times, or we take it all upon our own shoulders.

For those of us who know we can’t handle it alone and have asked for a hedge of protection, life not only becomes more endurable, life becomes more adventuresome; especially if we go through each day closely watching for signs of spiritual activity. Joe Mazzella’s articles illustrate his daily awareness of God’s presence in his life. Just as Joe finds excitement in the simplest things, so can we. We can all live with a sensitivity that makes the most ordinary moments bristle with excitement. Developing this trait helps us gain real insight into what Heaven must be like and allows us to taste it while still in this world.

Begin a daily list of the special moments that make your spirit lighter. Look at each moment listed and determine if God was a part of the moment.

The beautiful flower you just admired….who created the flowers?
The cart full of groceries that cost two cents less than you had on you…did you know that bill wasn’t going to go over?
The beautiful baby in your arms…who created life?
Arriving at just the right moment to prevent something bad from happening…luck? I think not.

The next time you start to use the words “luck” or “coincidence”, look again. God constantly conceals his handiwork through probabilities so that only those who are looking for Him can realize He was there. If He put out a sign saying, “God did this,” we would never learn to trust, we would never grow in faith. We would never gain a relationship with Him.

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Meditations
Nourishing the Spirit
We must consider care of the body to include development of a rich spiritual life
July 05, 2006

We have a great responsibility to ourselves in this journey called life. We have a responsibility for the care of our spirit as well as our body. All the health clubs in the world cannot rescue our soul, that is a choice only we can make for ourselves. Consequently, we must consider care of the body to include development of a rich spiritual life.

To nourish our spiritual life we must become passionate about our souls and place spiritual concentration first instead of playing golf, or making money, or going to parties. This is not to say we must give up our life, it is to say the spirit cannot be properly nournished within one obligatory hour of the week. It demands far more of us. It demands spiritual concentration, determination to remain focused with the same kind of passion required to make a fortune or become a famous sportsman or musician.

If we cannot find resources in the modern world which help us journey deep within, we must continue to explore until we find those resources. As I have searched for the Way to God, I have gradually wandered back in time to the writings of the earliest Christians. These writings have introduced me to thinkers fresh on the path introduced by Christ and unsullied by years of man-made modifications. May Sarton's insightful poem expresses the spiritual needs of today and the path back to find our whole selves:

Return to the most human, nothing less
will nourish the torn spirit, the bewildered heart,
the angry mind: and from the ultimate duress,
pierced with the breath of anguish, speak of love.

Return to the deep sources, nothing less
Will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
To carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
And still that ancient necessary pain preserve.

O we have moved too far from these, all we who look
Upon the wooden painted figure, stiff and quaint,
Reading it curiously like a legend in a book--
But it is Man upon the cross. It is the living saint.

To those who breathed their faith into the wood
It was no image, but the very living source,
The saviour of their own humanity by blood
That flows terribly like a river in its course.

They did not fear the strangeness, nor while gazing
Keep from this death their very precious life.
They looked until their hands and hearts were blazing
And the reality of pain pierced like a knife.

We must go down into the dungeons of the heart,
To the dark places where modern mind imprisons
All that is not defined and thought apart.
We must let out the terrible creative visions.

Return to the most human, nothing less
Will teach the angry spirit, the bewildered heart,
The torn mind, to accept the whole of its duress,
And pierced with anguish, at last act for love.

May Sarton, American author, poet.
The Lion and the Rose.

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Musings
Losing the Vision
I had the head-knowledge, but I did not feel the passion
July 08, 2006

Being told a truth is never the same as experiencing that truth. A mother may tell her child a fire will burn the child; the child may even comprehend the concept that fire will hurt. But knowing in the child's mind that fire burns does not have the same impact delivered by the painful reality of a real burn. The physical burn, however, is nothing compared to the spiritual problems which can result for we who are "second-generation Christians."

In Hearts of Iron, Feet of Clay, Gary Inrig writes, "The second generation has a natural tendency to accept the status quo and to lose the vision of the first generation. Too often the second-generation experience is a second-hand experience. The parent’s fervor for the Lord Jesus Christ becomes the children’s formalism and the grandchildren’s apathy."

As a second-generation Christian, I puzzled over my parents' deep passion for God. I had the head-knowledge, but I did not feel the passion. This shallowness on my part eventually led to my becoming too busy for God and just as I became "too busy" for God, He became too busy for me. I had reached adulthood with a sense of security without truly realizing the source until it had already been removed. When I finally looked back and realized Murphy's Law, whatever can go wrong will go wrong, was a new truism in my life, I understood I had somehow lost something of tremendous value. I did not really understand how I'd lost it and had no idea how to retrieve it. That's when I should have turned to the Bible for answers instead of listening to Frank Sinatra sing I Did It My Way.

The Bible says, The people worshiped GOD throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the time of the leaders who survived him, leaders who had been in on all of GOD's great work that he had done for Israel....Eventually that entire generation died and was buried. Then another generation grew up that didn't know anything of GOD or the work he had done for Israel. The People of Israel did evil in GOD's sight...they deserted GOD, the God of their parents who had led them out of Egypt; they took up with other gods, gods of the peoples around them. They actually worshiped them! Judges 2:7,10-12 (The Message)

It's easy to look past the importance of these verses if we can rationalize away worshipping the gods of the peoples around them. Have times changed just because we don't see a golden calf on an altar? No. If we travel with a crowd that's ambition for possessions, won't we find ourselves worshipping things instead of God? If our slogan for obtaining money is "whatever it takes", just how does God's guidance on upright living fit into the scheme of things? If we marry someone without considering their spiritual leanings, have we even considered God in the most important decision we are likely to make?

Back to me and the verses in Judges. When I lost sight of my God-given purpose, He did the same in my life that He'd done back in Judges. He lifted my protection. Regaining the position my parents' prayers had allowed me was a long hard road. The painful journey was not much fun but the end of that leg of my life journey held rewards which were worth making the way back to God!

It's so awesome to feel surrounded by love again!!

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Meditation
Understanding with the Heart; Loving with the Mind
Thankfulness changes our perspective, calms our nerves, and makes even mundane moments stuck in traffic seem less significant
July 11, 2006

Most of us have a steady stream of commentary, explanations, judgments, speculations and interpretations flowing through our mind. We rehearse anticipated conversations and rehash old ones. We mentally ramble though old movies, novels and fantasies. How can we harness all this mental energy and turn it toward God? Meditation!

Meditation begets a deep yearning; apprehension and adhesion march together. We understand with the heart; we love with the mind. --Emily Herman, The Touch of God

Thinking is useful. It helps us anticipate, plan, organize, understand and live more effectively. But useful thinking makes up only a small portion of most people's thought. The rest is just compulsive mentating; this is where we find the room and time to passionately yearn for the touch of God without even adding another item to our daily agenda.

The next concern is how to anticipate, plan, organize, understand passionate yearning without stopping everything else---DON'T stop! With each movement we make, each thing our eyes fall upon, we can find something for which we are thankful. The longer we replace compulsive mentating with active thankfulness, the more our passionate yearning grows. In other words, it just happens all by itself (or perhaps God gives a big assist). However it may happen is of no consideration in comparison to how much constant thankfulness changes our perspective, calms our nerves, and makes even mundane moments stuck in traffic seem less significant.

Where the understanding is exercised upon the things of God, there the will begins to energize toward the Divine and love bursts into flame. --Emily Herman, The Touch of God

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Teachings
Growing Through Painful Adversity
It is through personal agony that we are likely to begin to understand
July 14, 2006

Life can and does hand us more than we can handle. The hardest thing to grasp in the middle of a crisis is an understanding of the crisis as an opportunity to grow in our personal relationship with God as well as progression in our spiritual maturity. In fact, it often takes years to gain this perspective about a particular event, but each time we succeed we are quicker to grasp the true picture during the next "growing lesson." Oswald Chambers gives it to us straight:

Chambers, O. 1996, c1934. The shadow of an agony. Marshall, Morgan & Scott: London

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Meditations
Our First Priority
Let me seek the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer
July 17, 2006

Standing in silence, gazing at a star-filled night sky, one can feel God's presence. It can be a powerful moment in which our needs for peace are satisfied and our soul is replenished. Looking out over the ocean as the sun sets and getting lost in the blazing colors of God's daily masterpiece can be a powerful moment in which our needs for peace are satisfied and our soul is replenished. These are the moments in which we can draw closer to God and He can redefine who we really are. This intense time where we are consumed by His presence is when real understanding and purpose is being developed in us.

Being the human beings we are, a problem presents itself when we find ourselves denied the star-filled sky or the gorgeous sunset. Weather is nasty about interferring with our need for a supportive environment in which to meet the Father. The same holds true for time schedules and family and just about anything else. Does this mean God-time is not at the top of our list of priorities? We challenge that idea but then we have to admit to the reality that we put God-time first when we have time for it to be first. Excuse me, the one who created our being and then loved us so much as to sacrifice himself for us can slip a notch on the ladder of priorities? Even though we have to accept and acknowledge ourselves as we are, we must be nauseated by our human-ness. It is when we become sufficiently disturbed by our fickle nature that we will be able to gain the Father's assistance in redefining our priorities, placing the most precious at the top of our ladder of priorities.

Let me seek the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is in all. Thomas Merton

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Meditations
Prayer
Prayer should be understood, not a mechanical recitation of formulas
July 20, 2006

Alexis Carrel, Winner of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Medicine, believes "prayer may set in motion a strange phenomenon, the miracle. Prayer should be understood, not as a mere mechanical recitation of formulas, but as a mystical elevation, an absorption of consciousness in the contemplation of a principle both permeating and transcending our world."

In the book The Practice of the Presence of God we are given the state of mind most conducive for contemplative prayer, "God's treasure is like an infinite ocean; yet a little wave of feeling, passing with the moment, contents us. Blind as we are, we hinder God, and stop the current of His graces. But when He finds a soul permeated with a living faith, He pours into it His graces and His favours..."

Bede Frost, The Art of Mental Prayer, says, "The essential note of progress in prayer is simplification. Beginning with mental prayer, in which there is a large use of the understanding, having as its end the motivating of the will, the soul, more or less unconsciously and by virtue of its fidelity, passes to a prayer in which the understanding moves the will much more rapidly--one thought, and that more and more single and simple, actuating to the acts of prayer....in the prayer of simplicity, acts follow thought without any appreciable interval, until in acquired contemplation the multiplicity of acts give way to a single direction of the soul toward God in which acts of prayer, as hitherto practised, are merged in an intuitive sight in which the soul no longer meditates upon God, nor addresses Him in varied acts, but simply adoringly, and lovingly contemplates Him as its Supreme Good.

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Teachings
God, I need help
Sooner or later, we find ourselves in frightening situations where everything seems out of control
July 23, 2006

Sooner or later, we find ourselves in frightening situations where everything seems out of control. We have been deserted by those people from whom we normally expect support; we are too anxious and frightened to know what to do. The more we attempt to analyze our situation and make a good decision, the more our mind travels in circles further compounding our confusion.

These are the times when we clearly understand that we cannot depend on people; that we need some authority greater than humanity. Where do we go? If past experiences have already taught us to turn to the Spirit, we know the true source of help.

But are we as adept at hearing the Spirit when our mind is fogged with circular thinking as we are when we are calm and peaceful? Have we really learned to separate messages coming from the spirit from those messages filtered through the mind?

A wise woman once encouraged me to look for three confirmations to a thought or decision before making any forward movement. For me, it usually goes like this:

"God, I need help"
Silence
"God, I have this problem I need help resolving...."
Silence
"God, I can't seem to understand what's going on: my mind is going whacko and I can't figure out what to do."
Silence
"God, do you think I should do this....?"
Silence
"God, how about if I do.........?
Silence
"God, I'm so tired, I can't wait longer, I have to rest.
Silence
"Wow, that's a totally weird thought, where did that come from? I thought resting would help me think, not give me strange ideas. God, what do you think of that thought"

Slight stirring in my spirit

Once I begin to explore the idea, I need to determine that I am hearing from the One Living God and not being tricked by another spirit. I look for three confirmations of the idea within the near future; three confirmations that are in line with what I find in the Bible, before taking the idea as my course of action. Where do I find confirmations? Almost anywhere.

In the movie "Bruce Almighty" Bruce is asking God for a sign. In front of him is a truck laden with signs saying "Road Out Ahead", but Bruce is so busy with circular thinking that he does not pay attention to the signs and attempts to pass the truck. In trying to pass, he swerves out of control and hits a telephone pole. Bruce still does not realize God is answering him because he is not listening to his spirit. He is totally absorbed with his mind clutter.

So the trick is not getting confirmations, it is getting quiet enough to allow the Spirit to let us know we have received confirmation.

Isaiah 45:3
I'll lead you to buried treasures, secret caches of valuables-- Confirmations that it is, in fact, I, GOD, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.

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Musings
No Retirement Plans Here
Special Spirit Moments come through knowing one is part of a community
July 26, 2006

The electrician installing service in the empty dump next door asked, "Guess you've lived here all your life?"

I told him I had just moved to the inner city six months ago. His smirk increased as he asked, "Well, how do you like it?"

I responded to the smirk as I replied, "I like it. I hadn't expected to be happy here, but I am. I really like it."

I got the impression he didn't quite believe me.

Why do I like it? Because the people are friendly, the community spirit is strong. In six short months I know the names of neighbors in each household on the block and, even though it's a rowdy bunch, I feel safe. I believe someone would take notice if something happened to me.

Special Spirit Moments come through knowing one is part of a community. Each morning and evening as I walk my dog, people wave and call out to the dog, "Ain't we special" and he waves his tail in reply. Yes, I am happy here.

Another year has passed since I wrote the above and I am using one of my duplexes as a community center where some young adults from church are working with the kids in the area. This week the 7-11 year-old boys are off to basketball camp and they are loving it. One young man who is ADHD has already received kudos on his skill and his behavior. We are also working on reading and counting change. It's a busy AND REWARDING time in my life.

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Praise
Ode to a Petunia
Safely held by God and His potted Petunia! and those policemen who want the inner city to be a safe, beautiful place to live
July 29, 2006

The ministerial couple from the Appalachian Mountains presented the Living in Simple Faith House with a beautiful basket of potted Petunias early in May. I loved those beautiful deep rosy-pink Petunias with the white edging and experienced real joy as I watched them grow larger and fuller. Recently I glanced at them glowing on the porch rail much too quickly yet long enough to register they were more beautiful than they'd ever been before.

I was in a deep slumber at 1:14 a.m. that night when my German Shepherd/Black Lab nearly took my head off as she tried to go through the window by the front door. I was annoyed with her and quickly took her to the back of the house, putting her outside into the fenced yard. Then I stood at the back door a long time watching her actions, our yard and each of my neighbor's yards as there had been intruders reported the previous night.

Not seeing anything, I returned to my comfortable bed and my refreshing sleep satisfied all was well and Mercedes had just had a wild hair--probably over the raccoon living in the neighbor's attic. In the morning, I'd barely made it through the front door when I realized the porch was so drab and plain--there was no blaze of color from the rosy-pink Petunias!! They were gone!!

I looked to see what else was missing and found the lawnmower, the lawn rake, the shovel, the electric fan, the lawn chairs, and all the other potted plants--still there. Only the Petunias seemed to be missing. And then it hit me! Ask God's blessings upon those beautiful flowers which had been donated by His servants to His house. Ask God to keep those flowers in His service wherever they might be and wherever they might go. Then I called E.S. and Elida's phone number in the Mountains and asked for more prayers over the Petunias. I was convinced those flowers would be put to far greater use than sitting on the porch rail being admired.

Then I began to ponder the natural side of the situation and considered the fact that three houses in a row having experienced intruders within a 48 hour period might be indicative of an unhappy trend. Damage has been done at the neighbor's house so she had to make a police report. She indicated the policeman who came to her house was annoyed at being bothered over anything so trivial, so she warned me what to expect when she handed me the phone number for reporting.

I called. I sat on hold a long time. The operator who came on the line took the basic information and put me on hold. After a long pause, she said someone would be getting back with me. As I was waiting for the police to come to the house, the Police Dispatcher called and asked I go over everything again. I was quick to let her know I was not expecting my Petunia back, but was concerned we were being seen as an easy target. She offered additional patrols on our block for a while.

I feel safe, safely held by God and His potted Petunia! and those policemen who want the inner city to be a safe, beautiful place to live.

"Can anyone think of believing in God without trusting him? Is it possible to trust in God for the big things like forgiveness and eternal life, and then refuse to trust him for the little things like clothing and food?" --Oswald Hoffmann

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