An Easter Treasure

I had a dream last night - Easter Eve 2016' - that I went to a prayer meeting with a new friend who wasn't sure she believed.  Actually, the 'new friend' from my dream was a lady that I work with now who I don't have a chance to speak with much.  I remembered strongly trusting bringing her there, knowing she would see love, see Jesus because I knew the beautiful ones that were always there for those precious meetings.  There was a time during the service set aside for us to reflect and (for me) write about what we spoke and sang about.  I remember writing about some of my life, my testimony from the last 11 years really when my son and I came to West Shore and I really began to follow Christ and gained my new spiritual family.  I'm not sure of all that I wrote, but I do know that my unconscious mind pulled out the over-arching theme of that testimony/part of my life.  It was God saying very clearly, "If you trust me, you'll be okay."  I remember the sense that I was being given a treasure through those moments of writing, as I have been so many times at meetings like those.  And I woke up feeling the same sense of being given a treasure, a glimpse of something precious God was giving me....

I don't know how to adequately express how much His message has meant to me over the years, how much it still means.  "If you trust me, you'll be okay."  You  know, through all of the incredibly difficult trials and circumstances I've come through in the past eleven years (too many to list here - our lives changing so much, and re-changing, and physical things, financial things, spiritual things...), that statement from God to me has always remained so true.  He's never failed us (my son and I).  So again, when I needed to hear Him say the words, they have come.  'If I trust Him, we'll be okay.'  Is there any way to argue with that?

I suppose, of any time to reflect on the mercy of God, just how great a gift He gave us on the cross, it should be today.  I mess up so much and so often, yet when I feel at my 'dirtiest' for my mistakes and failures, His response is always that if I really trust that He has removed my sins as far as the east is from the west, He will take care of us.  No anger, no condemnation, no judgment, no giving up on the 'unteachable'.  Just simple, pure, unchanging love....

I think He couched the treasure in a dream about a prayer meeting because He knows that through my family (like at a prayer meeting) has always been one place where I could hear Him well, where I have felt safe and let down my guard (eventually), where the world was set aside and I could just BE in His presence, where I knew His likeness would always be true, to me and any around me.  It's been a place I grew to know I did not have to worry about being loved or accepted, it just was, miracle of miracles to a life like mine.  Just like it is with Him.  With this family, I learned how to just BE.  To just breathe.  To be loved and safe... In a world that has been so chaotic, that has been an anchor.  So as with my Father, I must trust that safety and pure love without limitation will not change as the world around me does, even as the safe family around me does.  I can still just breathe, just BE in His presence no matter where or how my 'safe haven' changes and disperses... He's never changed through any ending or goodbye.  He never will.  If I can just hold on to that... this is a passing sorrow, however final it seems right now.


Isaiah 43

But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
    and because I love you,

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
    I will bring your children from the east
    and gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
    and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
    and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
7 everyone who is called by my name,
    whom I created for my glory,
    whom I formed and made.”

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord,
    “and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
    and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
    nor will there be one after me.
11 I, even I, am the Lord,
    and apart from me there is no savior.
12 I have revealed and saved and proclaimed—
    I, and not some foreign god among you.
You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “that I am God.
13     Yes, and from ancient days I am he.
No one can deliver out of my hand.
    When I act, who can reverse it?”

“Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.

“I, even I, am he who blots out
    your transgressions, for my own sake,
    and remembers your sins no more."

Amen.  And, THANK YOU family... for teaching me what He meant...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBrVAgezRAY

Flight of Praise

Perdition, my heart remembers you well

But every time you call to me

I remember I am free

And the shackles which once bound me

Are no more

 

Lord, I would rather be a slave for You

Than a king over many lands

Rather be held in Your hands

Than hold jewels as grass holds morning dew

 

I stand with my arms to the heavens

My face to the sun

I drink in the light of You

And sing Your praises to the skies

 

When evening cools the air to softness

The birds fade their song to a lullabye

I watch the first stars appear against the lilac sky

And feel the world embrace me as Your arms

 

I no longer fear the night

Nor the slow on-set of morning

For night has been turned to rest

And mourning to dancing

 

Like a morning bird I fly free

Into the blush of heaven’s dawn

Forgetting the trouble past

And looking onward to a new tomorrow

Heaven Winks

30 years to remember
30 years to cry
30 years to look back
On that last goodbye
30 years to forget
30 years to dream
30 years to push forward
Into this new world

30 years has changed my face
To someone I barely recognize
A child of my own in bed
A few grey hairs
Old memories and faulty new ones
The same eyes...
The same eyes that saw and recognized
The same ones that held your gaze
The same eyes that wept tears
And the same eyes that have learned to laugh again

Sometimes I will look at something totally new
And find that it still reminds me of you
Like a newly developed picture
That was plucked out of a different time
You are gone but you never left
Your shadow lingers everywhere
In my brother's voice
In my son's eyes
In my niece's love of puzzles
In the way I like to draw and we all love music
We all love Jesus

There is an enduring legacy here
Your sisters still talk of you
But they also talk now about their Creator
Someone they never knew without your example
And your mother is there with you now
She wouldn't have been without your words

Most people seem to think that heaven
Is a place beyond our imagining and removed from our experience
But I disagree
It may be beyond understanding in splendor
But I don't believe removed from our experience here
We will feel no pain there, know no worry or fear
How could you with Jesus there?
I think it more of Him giving you 'grace glasses'
None of the pain, but all of the reward.
I feel the eyes of heaven looking down
And they are not God's eyes alone
They are those, like you, who've gone before us
Whose dream it was to see us live, to see us grow
To see us struggle and still look up and say 'I believe.'
What greater joy could there be for those acquainted with angels
Than to see their lives restored by the redemption of those lives they held most dear?
Call me a dreamer, or an idealist, or a fool.... but THAT is my belief of your time in heaven
The Savior breaks the bounds of what men can dream
And He reveals to you what we cannot see

And heaven winks with the sunlight.

John 15:15English Standard Version (ESV)

15 No longer do I call you servants,[a] for the servant[b] does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.