REUNION

                                                               

      We create.  Her work is beads and costumes, music and song.  Mine is pies, words and babes.  Thirty-two times  of 4 seasons have passed since we learned together the ways of life after high school graduation.  We created research papers, junk food and impulsive memories then.  Made out of 4 girls in a cold, old apartment in a part of the city where redemption was scarce, doors were locked and curtains closed.  Except for the apartment in the top of the house where 4 gals studied, laughed, messed up and prepared to serve God.  We were young, doors were sometimes left unlocked, and God service was magnified within our thoughts but blurred with shallow pools of experience.   Scarcity of furniture, food and time was nothing compared to the scarcity of understanding of the God we would serve and what he would require.    We created "home" by hanging curtains we found, filling cupboards with borrowed dishes and pans, and bringing leftover chairs  from the homes we grew up in.  With such things we filled  this temporary space.   But we did not fill it well with people because life was busy.  Classes, loves, jobs, church , papers and projects kept us in and out of sync.  We were as much apart as together, hiding secrets, sharing only what was right or safe.  We have since learned that righteousness and safety are not always the same and neither always what they seem.  From these threads we created a  bond  thinly braided around our young goal and naive vision of serving God.  

    Now here we sit 32 more years worn and aged . Her dark blonde hair colored to hide gray and my clothing carefully selected to hide the extra pounds, these  the only secrets we keep  from one another now. Our secrets exposed at this reunion of friends, we benefit from hind sight to see their results and purposes revealed.  We marvel at how deeply  we had hurt and how fiercely personal was the enemy's attack, and how dark the decisions we made alone while dwelling together.  We feel free to be flawed now.  He has created authentic desire, see through hearts and battered weary warriors out of  years of His sovereign grace and secure love.  Our wrinkled skin and larger thighs  do not embarrass or detract from our bond of past.  It is found in deeper places than our skin.  The cord has grown in strength from fragile thread with which we began.  Our laughter now says joy, our tears of sorrow  now shed in the security of His love.  Our purpose is the same, but gone are ideas of mountaintop service for we have learned the cost, the fail and the gain in serving.  And so He creates in three friends flawed work, steady purpose and steadfast hope.  We part with baggage lightened,  for we have shared the depth of our sin, the redemption that has come and from the secrets He teaches us Grace.  Sweet reunion.

^{Hosea 2:4} Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

¹⁵ And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

¹⁶ And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.

WAITING

                                                               WAITING

     I don't do it well, this waiting.  I want to talk and solve and plan but higher goals demand my silence , my stillness, my pretend.  His work in me is the waiting while He works through others.  Prayer is halting, distracted ,hard .   Capturing thoughts is war.  When I can not sit them down, He pushes them through clear and honest.  I read and read but words don't mean too much.  But words from memory come when needed, (why don't I store up more for times like these?)  I want to talk and share and cry to someone flesh but not if work is hindered by my rush.  So I wait and pace and cry.  I laugh too when covering fret so others will not ask, and I will not speak.  Pretending seems the hollow thing, but necessary for the cause, for a while for the battle with my flesh.  Waiting is not an easy work to one so busy doing,  kindred to  Martha.  Sitting at his feet and waiting, soaking, hoping, trusting, requires soul that trusts and believes.   I  Remember sitting on my father's lap waiting for the talk to end so I could have a say, but falling asleep.  Lap warm, father strong, waiting but not worrying, steady voices talking, lulling me to peaceful sleep even while waiting my turn. That sweet peace so hard now to feel from Father of my soul, though His lap is warmer, stronger, steadier.  My plan seems good and well thought out, but not the one He is using.  Can I let it be and trust the One who waited for the time of His father's plan?  Wait and call upon  and trust His doing unseen?  This the work He does in me while waiting for  His work in them. 

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. Ps 27:14

WALKING BY SIGHT

                                                               

                                                               Walking by Sight

     I did not pray for this sunshine, this ray of hope, this unexpected twist. I prayed for clouds to clear and be gone.  I hoped for heart work, frugality, stretching pennies and sacrificing new clothes and fast food. I dreaded to be content, this cloudy heart.  I prepared for debt and coming rains of change, and relationships dampened and stretched like leather drying for changing purpose.  And this ray of hope peeking through the clouds of change and stretch, is not as sure as green grass on our fresh mowed lawn, but it is a sign.   It came from skies that showed no sign of sun, from the side of home that I do not look because of trees and house and cars, down-here signs,  that block my view.  How did He bend a golden ray of fallen nature  to do His bidding?   Ashamed that I resigned to darker days while trusting His work to be done in our heart, but not our sky.   This ray of hope convicts my  meager faith and warms my love and renews the awe of mighty God of Sun that can do such things.  Green lawn and yellow house barely lit by this warm peek of future sunshine can brighten under its reminding glow.  Now I can trust for more and be still with less because the beam affirms His power. Now I see by this lighted truth behind a  thinning cloud, that if  no sun breaks forth, He is able author still.  Greater glory  had been His if I had walked by faith in cloudy days and not by sight, but I have not learned to walk in the light so perfectly yet.   Can  I now toil down cloudy path believing light is neath the clouds without a ray  by which to see?  One step illumined at a time, no more, this is what "faith and not  by sight", promises for this sun seeking daughter.

Is 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways.