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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Release the arrow

Raise the sail

Break the tension

Tear the veil

Sound the waters and check the gate

The King is coming

Make no mistake

I was asked to create a painting that illustrates a verse from Hosea (6:3).  This image illustrates the promise of the sun coming back out and rain showers watering the earth. The great flower in the sky is opening up like vents of a window, and pouring out a fresh spring rain. God promises us that He grips our desires and hopes firmly in His hands and releases those manifestations on the earth in the most perfect, ripe timing when the right season is aligned with himself. We may not understand his heart through the ripening process, but the outpouring of his fulfillment is so abundant and worth it. It is sure and unmoving and as vast as the ocean. Even when all we see is cloud, he is preparing the dawn…

“Let us know Him;

let us be zealous to know the Lord.

His going forth is prepared and certain as the dawn,

and He will come to us as the rain that waters the earth.”

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Hosea 6:3

Rising

Beneath the surface something is always rising. Everything has a temperature, things are always moving or sleeping, alive or still. The nature of nature is a planting moving with the winds of choice and methods of sustenance. What are we giving birth to beneath the outer walls? What is brewing beneath the surface soils of what meets the eye? What aborted hopes and desires are cut short or born through the processes of pursuit? The movement we seek becomes unlocked by vision of the heart. As we fix our breath upon God, things begin to rise inside. Eyes open, deaf hear, lame walk, and dead things are revived. Sleeping pieces stand up and obey the voice that fits them together in perfect order. Just as a seed of hope buries itself in a process of maturity and longing, our hearts become strengthened and ripened through persistence and willingness to stay put in the fire of testing. Seeds break, small conceptions die and unravel themselves as they spread apart and multiply. Like a newly pruned branch makes space for the blossom, our struggling desire for God’s dream becomes awakened through personal transformation. By movement, we become strengthened. A baby bird doesn’t wait for the egg to break, its strength becomes forged as it fights to be free inside the smaller space. I need not despise the day of strengthening and call it a day of disappointment. A life fully awakened is fully emptied of disappointments. Because space has been made for reforging. Doors were quietly cracked open for construction. A good day of heart construction. A glad day.

Sometimes growth seems to plateau. I refuse to wholeheartedly see God when stories of who I’ve been cloud the water. When I’m not sure all that He says about my future is happening. Surely I’ve done something to stain this perfect boundless dream. Subtly something in my cocoon of faith shrinks, quiets down. I am lured toward hard voices, sarcastic impatient responses swim around my opportunities to lay ahold of heaven’s map point. Another shepard pointing the baby butterfly back to the cocoon. When life is birthed, in the natural and of the heart, a new strength is also birthed. We emerge from smaller spaces with sword in our hands to cut loose ropes that restrict us. Strength is required for wings to spread. Resurrection takes place daily for seeds that wait. It is the nature of nature to worship God by birthing new life and learning to fly. And so I can take heart when my dreams of soaring don’t fit my newly broken shell of hopes not yet filled. Because He is rising from the smallest place in me, taking me from darkness to the tallest brightest sky. Picking up destiny on its way. e Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture.” -Malachi 4:1-3

“Then you will take delight in the LORD,

And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.” -Isaiah 58:13-14

“I will wake the dawn with my song;

The deeper your love, the higher it goes; Soar high in the skies, O God!

Cover the whole earth with your glory!” -Psalm 108

   ”You can only come to the morning

through the shadows.”

-J.R.R. Tolkein

“The Spirit Himself testifies together with our own spirit, assuring us that we are children of God. And if we are His children, then we are His heirs also: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ sharing His inheritance with Him; only we must share His suffering if we are to share His glory.

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

ROMANS 8

Psalm 46

“God is a safe place to hide,

ready to help when we need him.

We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,

courageous in seastorm and earthquake,

Before the rush and roar of oceans,

the tremors that shift mountains.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

River fountains splash joy, cooling God’s city,

this sacred haunt of the Most High.

God lives here, the streets are safe,

God at your service from crack of dawn.

Godless nations rant and rave,

kings and kingdoms threaten,

but Earth does anything he says.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

Attention, all! See the marvels of God!

He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,

Bans war from pole to pole,

breaks all the weapons across his knee.

Step out of the traffic!

Take a long, loving look at me, your High God,

above politics, above everything.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.”

“Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” Romans 3:19-23

“I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery.”

Colossians 2:1-3

Focus: single-mindedness-endurance-patience-fortitude-strength-vigor-stamina-spirit-bravery

The resolve to focus packs power. A scattered mind loses purpose and function, just as a languid spirit is without creativity and fruit. Vision is a gift which allows us to perceive what God values. And so vision gives worth to the things and people in our lives we otherwise might pass by. Vision raises a standard, gives perspective a name, and arms us with bravery that does not come naturally. I’ve been asking God lately, what are you showing me these things for? What am I supposed to do with this word/revelation? He’s handing me a fishing pole. Something to hang on to, something worth fighting for. Speaking of fishing, you will never catch me dying to go catch a fish. I do not have patience to sit around and wait. But maybe I’ve never had someone to pinpoint where to cast my line. Maybe a little bit of commitment and persistence is the difference between fulfillment and collapse. A willing heart to focus past what appears to be will penetrate the surface waters that only reflect self.

To endure is to abide. I don’t like to be pinned down to anything. A label, title, obligation, or expected role. This can be problematic. I’ve moved past some immature commitment-phobe mindsets for sure, but there’s something to be said about standing by something when nothing is happening. Abiding when I don’t feel like it. Sometimes I get bored with the marathon pace and miss the baton through the sprint. There’s some key to gain in each stretch of the mile. There are new winds to tap into, new gifts to understand, and new muscles being worked out into perfection. There are some places I’d like to pass through quickly and some I’d like splash around in for the day. The place we call home is often a place we fight for. A place we stand from. The place that supplies us and reminds us of who we are. There is a fine line between faith & focus and conformity to our perception of the situation. One keeps me circling in shallow waters and the other sets me on a promising course into an ocean of faithfulness. One mindset gives me permission to meet my own expcectations, and the other launches me into extravagant love.

Focus grows a staircase of faith in God’s fidelity to bring us home. Nothing can separate us from God’s fulfillment in our lives but us. He is jealous over his garden. He keeps diligent watch over who comes and goes, over what his colaborers allow to fall into the soil of his good intentions. Should I not honor his planting by standing for what God values? Even if it’s a blossoming creation I’ve yet to own? When we focus on what we own in order to control, we miss the grace because we forget what we really are. Children with a sovereign generous dad, who excitedly writes us into his adventure stories. He’s always throwing out lines to us, shouting our names and focusing on the valuables. And as God pours water out of the sky and onto my desert path, I am guided by reflections of heaven to point the way home.

“Vision, defined by the dreams of God, equips us with undying courage.”

-Bill Johnson

“The prophetic Word was confirmed to us. You’ll do well to keep focusing on it. It’s the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts.” 2 Peter 1:18-20