Why We Memorize The Promises

I curl up next to her on the twin bed, and lay an arm over her waist, careful not to bump the IV.

We didn't expect to be here this long, watching the moon reflect through window blinds. But the doctor said Lydia was still too sick to go home. So we dimmed the lights and pushed the button to recline her bed. Mama and firstborn pressed in to one another, and I breathed warm words on the back of her neck.

"Do you want to go first?" I asked.

"You go first this time, Mommy," she said, then scooted back to press her pink-wrapped body in closer still. "But don't say Amen, because then it will be like one big, long prayer, OK Mommy?"

And so we dropped eyelids, and I led the night's prayers in Room 115 as the IV pump tick-tick-ticked like a metronome.

It's for moments like these that we commit God's Word to memory. When we "eat this Book," its words stay like honey on our lips. On this night, we had no devotionals to read, no Bibles to highlight with green . We hadn't even packed toothbrushes because we didn't know we'd be having a slumber party in a hospital room.

But because she and I know Scripture, we can pray its Truths without holding the Book in our hands.

Because these Words? They're written on our hearts.

"Dear God," I began. "We know that you love Lydia. We rely on Your love. We know you hold her in your hand. And we know that You are here with us , even in this hospital room. We trust that you have good plans for Lydia, and we ask that you would heal Lydia, and give her rest on this night. We know You hear our prayer, and we thank you. In Jesus' name ..." (Colored words link to Bible verses -- the basis for our prayers. Clicking on them will take you to the exact verses at www.biblegateway.com)

Lydia prayed, too, then whispered our Amen. And I planted Mama-kisses on fever-red cheeks.

But for me, it wasn't time for bed. It was only 8:45 p.m. I walked to the family lounge down the hall, and looked for something to read. I chose a Bible and two outdated Guideposts magazine, circa 2005.

I walked back to our room with God's Word in hand, pushed open the door, and turned on a dim light over my bed on the other side of Lydia's room.

But a wee voice whispered. "Mommy?"

"Yes, Lydia?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "But I'm not going to be able to sleep with that light on."

And so I didn't get to crack the emerald cover of a borrowed Bible. I switched off the light, and in this darkness, I took to reading honey-sweet Scripture written on the soul. On that night, it was all I had. And it was all I needed.

I whispered in the darkness:

"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness."

"Pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge."

And I whispered this one last ...

" ...his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your ...."

Perhaps I stopped even before the last word was uttered. I'm not really sure.

But this I know, and this I pray you, Lord: May all my days -- even my very last one -- end this way: with Your Holy Word upon my lips.


***


Lydia and I returned home yesterday afternoon from the hospital. She was treated for dehydration and an infection. She is doing well.

I asked her this question today: "Why do you think people should memorize Scripture?" Here are her answers:

Reason 1 -- "Because Bible verses can help you in hard times." Lydia, age 7, said she has been praying the verse "Be still and know that I am God" this week to help her deal with struggles and losses we've faced. "It reminds you that even when bad things happen, God is in control," she said.

Reason 2 -- "When you memorize the words, it reminds you that the Bible is true not fake." -- Lydia's right. Becoming familiar with Scripture sets His Truths deeper into our hearts, helping us to combat doubts that creep in.

Reason 3 -- "We can memorize Scripture just for fun!" -- We give our girls stickers and highlighters and encourage them to mark up their Bibles -- to make these a "holy mess." They add flower stickers to mark verses that help them "grow in grace," and they add paw-print stickers on verses that help them in their "walk with Jesus."

A FINAL NOTE: Rick Warren, from the Purpose Driven Life, has challenged us to memorize one verse a week for the rest of our lives. In one of his daily devotionals last week, Warren wrote:

"You must use the Word of God as your weapon against Satan. Jesus modeled this when he was tempted in the wilderness. ... Memorizing Scripture is absolutely essential to defeating temptation. You have quick access to it whenever you’re tempted. ... If you don’t have any Bible verses memorized, you’ve got no bullets in your gun!"

Weekly, I join Ann Voskamp as we consider spiritual practices that draw our heart closer to His. This week, Ann asked us to share thoughts on memorizing Scripture. Would you consider joining us?

A Light in the Darkness

The Creator said the harvest always comes if we do not give up, and I watch the promise unfold in a cloud of harvest-dust.

It's misty-black all around, and the combine's lights guide Scott down rows of soybean plants dripping with ready pearls. I'm in my van on field's edge, with the window rolled down so I can hear the combine lumbering closer. I watch his lights come up over the edge of Earth, and he sees my lights, too.

My cell phone starts to sing its ring-tone: "I will rise, when He calls my name, no more sorrow, no more pain."

It's my favorite farmer calling.

"Hey," I answer. "Making progress?"

Yeah, finally," he said, and I can hear relief in his words. "Pray for no more combine break-downs, OK? But yeah, doing good. Really good."

I wanted to witness the night-harvest, I tell him, and I hope he can tell in the unspoken places how proud I am of him. This is his first harvest without his father. Scott is now the patriarch of this century-farm.

There's another father here for the harvest: mine. A Dukes man has come to help a Lee man. In our own darkness -- where the unknown lingers in shadowy places -- people walk with us, like God-Reflectors shining little lights on our path.

"It's so dark out here. How far out can you see?" I ask as the combine ambles closer, its black teeth gobbling rows.

"Not far enough," he says and laughs. "I don't know. Maybe 20 feet."

"Oh, gotta go," he says, as an alarm squawks in the background. "Grain tank's full. Call me later, OK?"

He steers away from soybean rows to fill waiting wagons, and his harvest rushes from the auger in a golden river.

I stay to watch, and think about how so much of what we harvest happens on the cusp of darkness. We labor in Light, but a dark blanket covers the path ahead. We have only enough Light for this step, for He never lets us see too far ahead. Instead, He peels back the dark as we step forward in faith.

God promised a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path. He didn't give us floodlights so that we could see what stretches ahead, nor spotlights to shine on what's past.

It's been a hard year, tinged with pain and death and grief and prayers that God didn't answer the way we wanted. It could all seem so dark -- except that it wasn't. God gave us Light, even in black-rimmed days.

We were never left in the dark. Never.

The Son lit the path, and asks us to trust as we lumber forward in the Kingdom harvest.

This weekend, I attended a Celebration of Life for a dear friend -- a mama of two young children, a wife, a funny and smart woman who made us better people. She lived in the light of each day, never looking too far ahead.

Her program included several sayings that she lived by, including this one: "God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road."

I like that.

I can trust Him when I'm balancing on the edge of this spinning orb,
when I'm taking a step into inky darkness,
knowing that when I get there,
The Son will shine.
"Follow me," He says.
And I press in so close
that my forehead rests on his back --
the same back that carried
the weight of a cross
up a hill.

"Thy Word is a lamp unto our feet,
and a light unto our path."
-- Psalm 119:105

I stay with Him. Because He is Light. And in Him, there is no darkness at all.

***

I write today in honor of Erika, who trusted God even when she could see no further than the next hour. "Whatsoever things are lovely ..." We used to recite that together. You are one of the lovelies, Erika. I think on these things ...

In Need of a Savior (Every Single Day)

I've never understood religion that tied salvation to doing the right things, performing the right rituals, acting the right way.

For me, it's been the reverse.

Because I'm a mess. I'd never make it under that sort of religious yoke.

As I grow in faith, I've become ever-more aware of my own depravity. I stand in daily need of a Savior. I needed Him once ... and I need Him for always. Every. Single. Day.

My salvation is not based on how "good" I've been, or how many good deeds I've performed. Rather, I cling to an incredibly gracious Savior who takes me as I am ... but promises never to leave me that way.

And the closer I grow to Him, the more aware I am of my own helplessness. That's why I wrote "Crimson" a while back.

Today, I am re-posting Crimson over at Tea With Tiffany. Tiffany asked me to guest-post for her and felt that Crimson was the right post. Tiffany knows what you and I know: That we are nothing -- nothing -- without Christ.

Perhaps you've read "Crimson" before. But might you visit Tiffany anyway?

Tiffany lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her family. She is a devoted follower of Christ and a writer who radiates with Christ.

She writes: "I was once a wild girl, now I'm wild about God. ... I thank God for His relentless pursuit for this prodigal. He has captured my heart for good."

To read the rest of Crimson -- and to meet Tiffany -- visit Tea With Tiffany.

(Email subscribers: you may click here or head straight to the site by typing the URL into your browser window: http://www.teawithtiffany.com ).

Photo: Tiffany Stuart

Logos, the God-Man

I still remember the first time I read the words: "Jesus wept."

I remember the crinkle of crisp pages turning, the settling into John 11, the finding of a Friend in the 35th verse. That morning, I read "Jesus wept" for the first time -- or at least it felt like the first.

Maybe I'd seen Him only as divine before -- on a faraway throne. Maybe that's why the words leapt fresh off the page and stopped me cold. For the first time in my life, I became aware not only of His divinity, but His startling humanity. I was caught breathless by the tears of the God-man.

Jesus of Nazareth knew what it meant to feel his throat tighten in grief, that lump of pain rising to stop words. He knew what it meant to cry, to drop his head in his hands and sob until shoulders shook.

And I wept, too, overcome by a divine God who let salty tears run down his rugged Nazarene cheeks while he stood at the tomb of a friend.

And that morning, in the quiet of my living room, we cried together. For a moment, I was there, too, outside Lazarus' stony hillside tomb at the side of a crying Christ, weeping for our losses.

Jesus wept with me. Dare I say, for me?

***

I fast. I pray. I slow to hear His voice. I journal. I sing. I nature-walk to see Him in sunrises and cornfields.

But of all the spiritual disciplines, none has affected my relationship with Jesus more deeply than this: reading His Word.

Because these ancient words ... they are more than letters dropped on pages.

These words are a Person.

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
-- John 1:1

I find a Person in these words -- a wild, fiery, unpredictable, holy, drop-to-my-knees-because-I-can't-fathom-His-greatness, Person in these words.

This Word -- this Person -- sanctifies, unites, divides, teaches, soothes, afflicts, convicts, and loves with Letters afire on pages. These Words are wild Words, fiery Words. They burn the soul, ignite spirit-flames, set hearts ablaze and tears to sting.

They are sharper than swords, deeper than ocean depths. Someone once said these words were shallow enough for a child to wade in safely, but deep enough for any theologian to swim in.

I've waded -- sometimes nearly drowned -- in the Living Waters of this Person. This Person is a buoy, and I float within this ocean, walk on water with Him there, watch Him calm my storms, part seas, wash me clean, refresh this parched soul. And new, salty springs erupt at the corners of my eyes.

We weep in the Word.

I open pages to plumb the heart of Heaven Come Down, to know a Divine Expression with a name: Logos. To know a Person, I study a heart. To know God, I plumb the Word.

λόγος.

The Word is a man, the God-man, our Christ who shattered the atmosphere, broke into humanity and wrote letters on human hearts.

λόγος. I meet Him in Word. Do I have any idea of its power? I can hardly fathom.

He is clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood.
His name is called
"The Word of God."
-- Rev. 19:13

***

Do we have the courage to meet Holy God in λόγος?

Here's where I meet Him; here's how He ignites a fire in me daily:

• Daily, I eat this Book, if only one Scripture at a time. Then, I look for ways to allow this Word-feast to multiply. Will I be a hearer of the Word, or a doer of it, too? Will I "eat this book" and let Christ turn these five loaves and two fishes into a feast for sharing?
  
  
• I meet the Word in my tent and altar, a black canvas bag that travels with me. I'm never without His word, for it is my Daily Bread.
  
  
• Journal and draw. I am not an artist, but I draw Scripture. It has brought new life to familiar verses. (A study-practice I learned last summer from Monica at Know-Love-Obey God.)
  
  
• Place reminders of Logos around your home -- by the kitchen sink, near the computer, at the bedside. Above door frames. At my back door, Scripture greets and reminds me every time I leave: "For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say." -- Luke 12:12
  
  
• Invite His Spirit to guide you as you begin your study, and continue in that attitude of prayer. Ask for God to build a desire in your heart for His Word. Then quiet your soul daily to hear a Person speak within.
  
  
  Logos of God, speak. We are listening.
  

This is part of Ann's weekly series: Walk With Him Wednesday.
She asks us this week:
"What one spiritual practice has most deeply affected
your relationship with Jesus?"
Today Ann shares a beautiful post entitled:
Eating Bread: The One Habit That's Most Changed Us.

Would you share a spiritual practice here in the comment box
... or perhaps on your own blog and join in this community
of Wednesday pilgrims?

λόγος -- Greek term, Logos, for "Word."

Clanging Cymbal

Love thy neighbor, Jesus says. And I think that I do.

But in this racing world, have I slowed enough to really love my neighbor?

Each day, I watch real-life neighbors zip down the highway in a blur of steel beyond the alfalfa field. I wave to them, and consider my effortless gesture an act of love.

In this place where a dusty country lane meets blacktop, our paths intersect, but our lives don't -- not really anyhow. For I am too hurried to love my neighbors as Christ taught.

I glance across cornfields, and see a woman sitting on her back step alone.

Love her? Too busy.

For years, I watched another neighbor shuffle by every day, kicking gravel down the shoulder, head down, eyes to the ditches. Alone.

Love him? Too risky.

(He died earlier this year, so I never found out what the investment would have returned.)

Instead of loving my neighbor, I retreat behind walls, and find ways to give only risk-free love -- the kind I can give on my terms, on my own time with little chance of rejection.

Easy love, this love. It's the kind of love I can send in a sealed envelope or over the information superhighway. I can put a stamp on it, hit "send," then walk away. And somehow I think I've loved thy neighbor as thyself.

"Get well soon! We're praying!" and we sign our names "with love." That's a cinch.

I write a check for a hungry child in Brazil, and stick a stamp in the corner of the envelope, and send it in the name of Jesus Christ. Easy love, this love. We've budgeted for this. Where's the sacrifice?

I tap words on a keyboard, speak the language of God-love here in a little corner of the Web with minimal face-to-face accountability. But if I don't give love away in my own neighborhood, I'm no better than a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal, am I? I'd just be a woman tapping out words of hope along a superhighway -- but living like a noisy gong along the Iowa asphalt of my everyday.

"So, no matter what I say,
what I believe,
and what I do,
I'm bankrupt without love."
-- From 1 Corinthians (The Message)

And then, every once in a while, love goes marching by our living-room window. And we have a chance to put this grace we preach into action.

***

That's how it happened this fall for our family friend, Bob. High-risk love showed up on the sidewalk of his middle-class, middle-America, middle-aged world in white-bread Iowa. And it wasn't packaged neatly in the way -- or place -- that Bob had expected. He had a choice to make.

It started with a mission trip to Mexico, where Bob heard God's call to minister to a Latino family when he returned to Iowa.

"I came home, and I was praying and looking for that family," said Bob, a pastor in a nearby town. "I talked to a Hispanic pastor looking for that family. I would go the trailer park, looking for that family."

Meanwhile, a man named Juan had begun strolling past Bob's house. "I'd wonder what he was doing out there in my neighborhood."

And then one day, God's nudge became a shove: "You need to meet that guy."

And so Bob did. He stopped, talked a while. They exchanged phone numbers. Turns out, Juan didn't live in the trailer park; he lived just down the street.

Hispanic Juan and corn-fed Iowan Bob are neighbors in a middle-class neighborhood in America.

"I'd been looking in the trailer park for a Hispanic family, and God had been parading Juan right past my house," Bob said. "This has been a spiritual marker for me. I mean, here I thought that Juan probably lives in the trailer park; that was my posture.* ... If I think that Hispanics can't live in my neighborhood, do I really love them? Do I really want their feet under my table?"

As it turns out, Bob really does want brown-skinned feet and Spanish accents coloring his kitchen. He and his wife are investing real love -- sacrificial love -- into people who can't be checked off a list with a Hallmark card.

They invited Juan's family over for Sunday dinner.

***

And, this morning, I consider love.

I look down the driveway, and God has sent another sunrise over the cornfield-carpeted crust of the Earth. In the quiet, across the field, I hear a screen door open then shut against a wooden frame. The neighbors are awake.

I spin dizzy on the axis of another day. Will I love easy today? Or will I love with ferocious, risky love expecting nothing in return?

Today, I will love with Kingdom Love.

On this day, I will step off the well-worn path back to my walled retreat. I will step into gusty love that demands more of me.

Who knows what might happen if -- on this day -- I love my neighbor as myself?

I might just find that my companions on the journey Home are pilgrims whom God has been parading right under my nose every single day.

***

Posture: The term comes from a chapter in a book that our friend Bob has been reading: The Tangible Kingdom. The book challenges the Body of Christ to live missionally in the kingdom. The authors suggest that we often don't develop our muscles of mission, but focus on growth in head knowledge and theological doctrines. The authors challenge us to think missionally, to truly follow Christ -- right here in our own communities. In this video from the authors, "a normal God-searching man finds hope as he sees a glimpse of the Kingdom in a community of friends, around a table, and everywhere he goes." Source: The Tangible Kingdom.




Street image from stock.xchng. Sunrise image from my front yard this morning.

On Being Ordinary

She thinks she's ordinary.

She grew up on an ordinary farm, with an ordinary family, here in ordinary, corn-covered Iowa. She's never scaled a mountain, or dug wells in Tanzania or worked for a Fortune 500 company. Only once did she hold a paying job, and that was before she was married.

She tried college, but dropped out after the first year, overwhelmed by the large campus and its big-scale expectations. "That was one of my first failures in life."

Yes, she says, she's just ... ordinary.

I shook my head. No, not ordinary at all, I demanded. And I asked her: Would she please come to my class to talk to the 21 aspiring writers I teach?

She asked me: What kind of story would they come up with for a 70-year-old woman from Iowa?

Just come, I said. You'll see.

She's anything but ordinary. For this woman pulses with extra-ordinary.

I should know: The woman is my mother.

***
In journalism class this week, I'm teaching students about "news profiles" -- these stories where personalities come to life in portraits painted with word-pictures.

I told my students that the most important part of a profile is this: finding someone with a compelling story to share. Words flashed up on the big screen behind me, as I clicked through the first three categories of "potential profile subjects":

Famous people.
Heroes.
Newsmakers.

But, I told them, there's more. Everyone has a story to tell. God has written a story onto each of our hearts. If we only look for stories in the people with names like Guggenheim and Rockefeller, we'll miss the extraordinary story in the common man.

I turned to the screen and clicked a final time to show them my favorite category of all: "Ordinary people who do extraordinary things."

"This," I told them, "is where you'll find the best stories of all." These walking portraits are all around us in the drive-through, the checkout lane, the back pew of the church. What might we find out if we put the brakes on our racing world, to stop and talk to people beyond the 140 characters of Twitter, the shorthand of a text message, the brushing past of one another in a grocery aisle, avoiding even simple eye contact?

If we asked the questions, what might we discover underneath?

I've done a hundred or more profiles on politicians, notorious criminals, businessmen and bureaucrats. But my favorite profile subjects will likely never set foot in a glassed office on Wall Street.

Perhaps these students might seek voices of the ordinary people: the ones who serve them at the campus dining hall. The ones who clean every toilet -- every day -- in their classroom dormitories. The ones who cut their hair, scan their groceries, stamp their mail.

"And now, class," I told them yesterday morning. "I have a very special woman I'd like you to meet. This is my mother."

***

Mom spent 30 minutes in front of the class of probing -- but polite -- journalists.

She told them how she married her high school sweetheart and had four babies. She told them about her cancer battle and how she has a hard time climbing stairs these days.

In a few minutes, with just a few questions, we peeled back layers.

And as I tap away at these keys this morning, tears run down this reporter's cheeks as I tell just a bit of her extraordinary story. I'd like to introduce you to my Mom:

Headline: AN EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY
By JENNIFER DUKES LEE

Sioux Center, Iowa -- Most folks who know Caryl Dukes call her Mama D. Which means that pretty much everyone calls her Mama D.

Because Mama D. doesn't know a stranger.

She strikes up conversations with store clerks and salesmen. Most folks cross to the other side of the street to avoid the severely disabled, the homeless, the drunks.

Not Mama D. She sees people.

Caryl Dukes has invested a life in serving others. She has logged unmeasured hours in nursing homes, visiting the elderly. She maintains a file of greeting cards to send to the lonely. She tells them she's praying -- and she does.

And Mama D. makes people laugh. Oh, does she make people laugh.

She once wore a wrinkly old-woman mask into a meeting that her husband (my father) was holding with auditors. Even today, she has a mask in her suitcase, for you never know when you might need to put on a silly mask to make someone smile.

She's a cancer survivor whose steps have been slowed by her battle with the disease. She has some trouble walking and takes staircase-steps this way: left, left, right, right.

But Mama D. shows no signs of slowing. She celebrated her 70th birthday and 50th wedding anniversary this summer. And she told 21 journalism students a bit about her life on a Thursday morning in a college classroom.

"I’m an ordinary person that’s lived a pretty ordinary life. I haven’t gone somewhere or saved a lot of hungry people that you might read about," she told them. "But I like walking with Him anyway, even if my gait is pretty slow."

And these students? I think they saw what I saw. They saw the woman underneath, a woman whose heart pulses with a God-story all her own.

They sat at their screens, and tapped keys to compose stories discovered in an "ordinary" mama.

One of them wrote this: "Caryl Dukes recounted what she considers an ordinary life -- when it is actually anything but."

Anything but ordinary. That is each of us, you know. Anything but ordinary. We are walking portraits of grace, each with one-of-a-kind God-stories written on our hearts.

And Mom? I'm so glad you shared your story, and so grateful that God let me be a part of it.

***

It is ingrained in us that we have to do
exceptional things for God
-- but we do not.
We have to be exceptional
in the ordinary things of life,
and holy on the ordinary streets,
among ordinary people.
-- Oswald Chambers

Photos: Mom, at age 5.
Mom, dressed as Cruella DaVille.
Mama D., wearing one of two Hawaiian hakus given to her by the Tongan people at a Methodist church she and Dad attend every January. She received one of the hakus as a gift after volunteering to play piano when the church was without a pianist one Sunday.

Keeping Company with Jesus

I keep company with Jesus in the colors.

How often have I looked for Him only in the palette of lofty places -- the stained-glass, the ironed cloth on the altar, the vestments and banners saturated with color. Oh, He is there. I've kept company with Him in the steepled places where He radiates His God-colors in high-gloss finishes of a sanctuary.

But I also find Him brightening up the monochromatic of my everyday.
Every. Single. Day.

My Technicolor Jesus keeps step with me over soapy sink, fluffed white with bubbles. Cleanse me, Lord. Make me white as snow.

I keep company with my Technicolor Jesus in the backyard terrace, overgrown with umber and blonde wisps of weeds. We're all dying, Lord. Prune me for eternal seasons in yet-unseen hues.

I find Him in blue-inked prayers lining journal pages,
in highlighted-green Bible passages,
in the crimson of Jesus' own words in The Word.

In our family, we keep company with Jesus by responding to Him in the margins of our Bibles. We call our Bibles "holy messes," for they are marked, underlined, dog-eared and yellow smiley-faced. Lord, I'm a mess, too. Let me find holiness in You, Colorful You.

Lydia zips open the purple cover of her own Bible, and finds herself in the words, right there with the Lydia who sells purple cloth in Acts 16. Lord, let me find myself there, too -- so thrilled in the discovery that I can't even keep my lines straight.

You're here to be light, bringing
out the God-colors in the world.
-- From Matthew 5 (The Message)

This is our Technicolor Jesus, with whom we keep step and company. He infuses this ordinary mama-life with color, when I set myself to laughter on Fisher Price-decorated carpet; when I wake breathless to slate-gray haze burned off by blazing sun.

We keep company with him when colorless Joy-Tears run rivulets down our dirty farm faces -- for the harvest has finally begun.

He is making Technicolor miracles in fields of wind-whipped grain; in bright-red wagons brimming with harvest promise; in a red-bundled, beaming father who comes to help with the harvest. (Thank you, Dad!)

Here Jesus is: full of color.

We keep company with Him when we notice the Extraordinary in our ordinary.

We keep company with God, when we remember His faithfulness. "The harvest will come at the proper time," He told us, and we underlined the Bible promise in green. Today, we look through a window -- with a bold-lettered reminder to PRAY -- and we see golden fields being sheared, six rows at a time.
We keep company with Jesus when we keep company with His sons and daughters -- who are our children, our neighbors, our husbands.


Is that a smile I see on my favorite farmer, silhouetted as he turns a lumbering combine west for another pass? Is that him thanking God as he drives into watercolor blue and orange sky?

Once upon a time, my God seemed gray and two-dimensional. But that was before I saw Him in my ordinary, everyday life -- turning humdrum into God-colored, polychrome multi-dimensional masterpieces.

I keep company with God, when I see what He's painted in this God Gallery:
a portrait of a God who is big enough to paint the sky,
and personal enough to make life-art that fits in a palm.




Our soybeans are creamy pearls. And He -- our Christ with whom we keep company -- rings us with silvery love. The silver ring on my finger reads, in Hebrew: Trust in the Lord.

We do, Lord. We trust in You ...

Every Wednesday, I explore spiritual practices wth Ann Voskamp. This week, I join her community of pilgrims in pondering how we "keep company with Jesus."
Might you consider joining us over there at Ann's?