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And then I asked the Lord “why is the Sun SO bright and painful to look at directly?”, and then the Lord laughs at me and says “So you look down and watch your steps you silly people”
#FallingTearingRotatorCuffoneYearAgoThisMonth
LOL
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So many times I ask the Lord: “Why is the moon SO beautifully lit to catch our eye?”…
I think He answers that it’s so we know where the Sun is, it points to the Sun even if we don’t see it – we can know it’s there – we can feel its warmth – and we can know we are alive to live another day…
That’s just like a reflection of You Lord, yes…
Thank you Lord for today…. I feel Your love and I await Your beautiful sunrise to tickle my eyes….
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Occasionally I drive by and stop at the 911 memorial at the local fire house, it calls to me and I need to touch the steel girder… And today this place with its contemplative music and austere tributes certainly reminded me to put my own real and perceived problems into perspective. I touched the steel with my right hand – ungloved – to feel the energy from the girder but it was freezing… Instead of taking my hand away, I felt compelled to put my other hand on the steel as well, but that one did have a glove on – wow – how warm… How different the feeling…
Immediately, I knew what this meant – I knew I needed to relate it to God’s love. When people face the cold harsh realities of life without knowing and loving the Lord and without reaching to the Lord, it’s a cold hard life… unforgiving and you feel frozen… frozen like you are unable to move into the Lord’s house of many rooms to find peace there… But with that glove on, we’ve put on the loving warmth of the Lord… WOW…
God’s love not only protects and comforts, God’s love enables us to remain holding on tight. That cold steel and the cold harsh realities of life is exactly the same – but how we approach it surely changes… put on God’s love and you can hold on… put on God’s love and you can keep functioning…
September 11th, I pray that those lost knew God’s love… there is an image in my head thinking about a Bruce Springsteen song, The Rising, while the people were racing down the towers, those firemen were racing up.
Where does that warmth of God’s love emanate from? His people are His treasures… He fills them with His warm spirit. That warmth in the glove came from internal warmth – warmth captured and sustained by cloth for the hand, physically… and internal warmth captured and sustained for all of God’s love, spiritually… The warmth captures the feeling of the mighty hands of Jesus lifting you, the winds of the Spirit moving thru you and the emanation of God’s love out from every dust particle that has formed your living breathing being… It is LOVE – God’s LOVE – God’s love THRU you.
Think about all of God’s people that September 11th day – while the towers were falling their souls were rising…. And I envision and pray that they felt the warm hand of Jesus grabbing theirs… He was scooping them all up – and yes, He’s always reaching for us too…
His warm love is there when we reach for it.
His LOVE is what is emanating thru us.
His LOVE endures forever.
Amen
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A thousand different reasons that people and I are waiting today – there’s precedence for the waiting… There’s HOPE for the future…
It Takes Time, 04Feb
Time, waiting waiting… (Sometimes it feels like there’s no time at all… But not when you are waiting)…
Waiting – a biblical mainstay –
Simeon waited his whole life as the Lord promised that he would see the messiah, in the flesh… Simeon was patient…
Noah waited for those flood waters to recede… Must have felt like an eternity – a year or so of waiting – these things take time – Noah had to be patient.
Jesus waited…
The Gospel of Mark – written with urgency while Rome was in chaos – captures the haste of Peter detailing the stories and also the haste of Jesus’s short three years of ministry… And I wonder how many times that Jesus thought, during his forty day retreats into the wilderness, that He needed to balance His sanity and his mission? That’s a human trait, Jesus was ALL in ALL plus human too… If we think it, He’s experienced it. If we wait, He’s waiting with us.
Jesus had to get away from the massive crowds who were seeking his physical healing over HIS message of eternal healing… He did show the physical miracles, because His believers asked – perhaps a side reason was to convince HIS critics – but He was really here to teach the deeper forever healing. Healing that comes from repentance and a willingness to be repaired. Healing comes from your own faith in Him. His message was getting lost… Only time will help spread this message now…
And I wonder ALWAYS if Jesus wished He had more time…
Now He has to wait too… Jesus has to wait, wonder how long until fulfillment of His mission… When will that cloud come by to scoop HIM up to return? Jesus also waits for His Father’s plan – our Father’s plan…
Waiting….
Waiting was what a few men decided NOT to do in Mark 2:1-12 when they ripped off part of the roof of the home Jesus taught in and lowered down a paralyzed man on a stretcher… Jesus’s message that day was that forgiveness of sins is why He came… “I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”(Mark 2:10)… Michael Card writes about Jesus forgiving of sins plus physical healing: “The visible reality of the man’s healed limbs is evidence of the invisible reality that his sins have been forgiven.” Jesus has been waiting for each of us to realize that for ourselves… Jesus is waiting…
Waiting, waiting for all His lost sheep to turn for home… It’s their faith which heals them… Jesus is waiting what feels like an eternity because it IS an eternity – all those God sends to Jesus will return home. It takes time to realize the search has to travel inside one’s own soul.
The Holy Spirit is here now to fill in the gap. Waiting is replaced by witnessing God’s SPIRIT moving. We should take the time to watch for God while we wait, stay disciplined and focused… What we are to be waiting for is NOT our plan but God’s plan to be fulfilled… Hope is fueled by knowing God is in charge. God is in charge of the time. The plan is fueled by disciplined focus on using God’s time wisely. It takes time to teach the people, one soul at a time.
God is worthy of our attention. He makes it worth the wait… We should work that wait too…
Amen
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Mark 2: A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. 2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. 3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves,7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
8 Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9 Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, 11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God,saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
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I’m not about to copy Michael Card’s whole book about the real, emotional Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, I do urge you to read it, but one more section I will add a picture in here for detailing a most important aspect of Jesus – HE WAS REAL – He got frustrated – He got angry – He felt loneliness… But He continued in His Father’s plan… He found Himself and His mission and His strength… All came from WITHIN Himself by seeking God – and God alone – in the wilderness… Physical and mental wilderness… We are NEVER alone…
GOD IS WITH US – ALWAYS!
Wilderness, Jesus retreated to pray it out… He was driven away from the crazy crowds, you surely can imagine that mob scene… the “man with the plan” couldn’t do his desired teaching, couldn’t connect, couldn’t make it into a perfect scene with ALL the people truly understanding… and He knew it….
Frustration of the situation, just can’t snap HIS fingers and make it all better instantly – how many times have we wanted to do that? for ourselves? for our children? for the aching world?!!!…
Jesus, full of compassion for the individual, emotionally flips “immediately” – He mentally realized the crowd scenes would do Him in, and there was nothing He could humanly do… Everything was in motion… Michael Card teaches that there are more people upset and disturbed by Jesus historically than who understand His ways… The world was/is lost – the Jesus we know was “lost in a lost world”… Working hard but it’s hard work…
Yes, Jesus found his way back out to continue His mission to preach…. God WITHIN pushed Him back to the plan, the road to Jerusalem, still the toughest road to travel, but no one said this was going to be easy… No one, not even God the Father said it’s an easy road. No one, not even God the Son, was above understanding the sheer enormous feeling of loss…
Wilderness, Michael Card reminds us that we have to follow Jesus into the wilderness to understand the depth of His pain – the man who came to save surely felt the immense loss of the people He loves… Still loves the people but frustrated by the loss.
Jesus aches – because He Loves all of us…
GOD IS WITH US ALWAYS…
Imagine His Joy to follow for each of us who find comfort IN HIM…
Amen
38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
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PS – in writing “lost in a lost world” – immediately the lyrics of the moody blues song of the same name seeped into my brain with exact lyrics about empty shell people – ONLY LOVE will fill that shell… We bend a knee to pray… Amazing matching sentiment… You tube with full lyrics: https://youtu.be/80nUhHofw0U
Have we forgotten who loves who?
(So many people, so many people)
Children from a family tree
That’s longer than a centipede
Started long ago when you and I
Where only love…
(So many people, so many people)
I woke today, I was crying
Lost in a lost world
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How I love Michael Card, his music pulled me in and my ears delighted, my heart grew, and now with his writing my head fills in those gaps I really didn’t know I had!!! And they are vast chasms for sure, but nothing is impossible with God, and here’s Mark’s Gospel to bridge gaps by filling the deep chasm in with living water… It will take my whole life to study Jesus…
Jesus is as deep and real and amazing as we can only scarcely imagine – This Gospel of Mark brings another dimension for us to see – Jesus’s emotional human side – as seen and shared by Peter… Mark is like a son to Peter, and records his accounts for the ages… we learn our faith deep inside an emotional deep relationship with Jesus… Their lives for our faith… God is showing that Jesus implored “I know EXACTLY how you feel…”
Cool… Who knew the four complimentary dimensions of the gospels (I constantly say: “why don’t they teach this?” Well, I guess it’s OUR job to seek it out – no, I KNOW it’s OUR job and it is a blessing to seek it out…. then I guess – I don’t have to guess – I KNOW it’s OUR JOB to share what we know) – and it is my amazement that unbelievably this information is lost to the average reader… Luke is the gospel of AMAZEMENT, Mark is the gospel of PASSION… I’m so grateful for deeper thirst of knowledge – and it’s SO important to share…
Mark was writing in the middle of Rome burning and in crisis… We have a connection of real time to history books – we have a book, this gospel, as a connection of real time to Jesus – God’s timing finds us and finds the time to share – Mark had to get this down and written because Peter was running out of time… Peter’s story is NOT lost… We are not lost either.
Mark’s Gospel is showing how Jesus can relate to us in our deepest issues and angst – even when we are emotionally charged, we can be changed, and He WILL find a way to challenge us to be changed… Maybe this understanding comes in the nick of time for us…
God knew I was lost, I didn’t, but He knew where to find me… He still does…
God knows…
He’s been there, and He knows us, our pain, our passion, our path…
Jesus came and comes for us, deeply looking for us to turn our hearts and tune our hearts with Him… We see that He understands when we are in turmoil too… Joy is found in the understanding of the journey that is sometimes wrought with twists and turns… We look with urgency to God… God urgently aches for us.
Mark wrote with urgency… Peter spoke with urgency… God’s timing for sure…
I can’t wait to read this gospel…
Thanks God for my time to learn…
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Jesus gives us the Green Flag…
In life, I don’t know what lap you are on – only God knows – but I hope you are running a good race!
But even if sometimes we feel like we are in the pit – just know that we are all STILL IN THIS RACE… Apostle Paul reminds us: “You were running superbly! Who cut in on you, deflecting you from the true course of obedience? This detour doesn’t come from the One who called you into the race in the first place. (Galatians 5:7 The Message)”
Life feels like a race but when you turn the corner and see the Green Flag, you know you are almost done – almost home – one more lap…. Of course this is a ROAD race and God designed this course of variable distance, so only HE knows the length – but you are in charge of your speed and your attention to the road, best to strap in with those seatbelts!… See, the path is narrow but sure – bumpy but sturdy – curved and you can’t always see around the bend… BUT you know you have made it “safe thus far” – that is by God’s grace – you know God says keep motoring – it is time to finish the race…
The greens of Christmastime remind us of life with Christ’s birth – the greens of Easter with our renewal of life – the green flag – look for that green flag. Listen for your pit crew chief Jesus calling out the instructions – Jesus speaks on God’s GPS to get you there. “Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” Hebrews 12:1
Look for the Holy Spirit to light your way. God gears us up. Yes, let us check in often with our pit crew chief Jesus, because when we give Him our mindful attention and our heartfelt devotion, then we are given that loving green light to life everlasting…
Some finish the race in super fast speeds, some crawl over the finish line with barely any gas left in their tank, and many are at every speed in between – actually your position at the finish doesn’t matter – because you know the truth – NO ONE is left behind!
And ALL the racers are cheered HOME!
Amen
Debbie Upper 