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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