Encouragement

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A little boy sits with his penmanship at the kitchen table, but his thoughts wander from the paragraph about billy goats on a farm to wondering about rams high up in the Rocky Mountains. No doubt the dripping snow calls to little boys on this first day of March. "Mom, can I take Milo out after I'm done?" "Why don't you take him out now," I suggest, thinking how much I can't wait for the first signs of spring to awaken my own soul from hibernation.

We're so good about seeing what's wrong before we see what's right. Too much of a good thing is either flattery or criticism. Both are a dishonest evaluation of things. In His light we see light.

In the darkest nights of my soul I clung to the Savior for there was no one else. He never left my side. And now that I am in the light, the scenery is more beautiful than I thought. Not imagined. Thought. Because my associations with life have caused me to think I knew more than I really knew. Now, I imagine. Sometimes it is necessary to be surrounded with darkness in order for the light to be as clear as it should be. And the facets of the Creator take my breath away. In fact, if God doesn't take your breath away most days, then I wonder how much light you have.

Don't misunderstand. I am not talking about continual, mystical experiences. I'm talking about how the stars still amaze me, and the howling wind calms me, and even the mischievous, little squirrel at the bird feeder makes me smile as I watch him call the shots.

It's all about how you see it. It's all about how much light you have. It's about how clear you are seeing.

Who can grasp the infinite wisdom of the Lord? Who can understand His ways? He cannot be contained. Yet, how often we do put restraints on God. And we place upon ourselves and others the crushing weight of measuring up as if God has created robots.

Does God ever take a vacation? Or do we have Him positioned in such a way that demands quality, quantity, and qualification? Does God ever get up from his desk long enough to look out over the world and delight in us ... just as we are? Does He still marvel at His creation? Or does He plan the next lesson for us to learn in order to measure up, qualify, and make the grade? Don't I already have the passing grade?

We want to know Him. We want more understanding of His thoughts and His ways. We want to possess all that He has for us. And yet, how often we go backwards to what is familiar, what we understand. The Israelites did it. The Galatians did it.

The Bible tells us to delight ourselves in the Lord. It tells us to have faith as a little child. This depicts to me an expression of not being so calculating. We live with principles in place but we also live with a kind of abandonment. How can two dwell together? When we are abiding in the Vine, we know that we are surrounded above and underneath with the Vine. And no matter what the elements are, we are protected within the Vine. There is joy and peace in this kind of thinking. Because we do not put more than we should upon ourselves and upon each other as we mentally go down our criteria.

I don't think about telling my kids to change their attitude any longer. I don't always think when you do this then you can have that kind of thing. I don't always think about work first, measure up first, do this first, do that first ... and then ... then. Order? Yes. Structure? Yes. Truth? Yes. But those things alone lead to the very thing that God came to redeem. The absolute crushing weight and frustration of the law. If I'm going to err, I'm going to err on the side of loving mercy.

And so the penmanship lesson waited. He has the rest of his life to write perfect letters. But the dripping snow, the fresh air .... the freedom that I give him speaks of the heart of God ... who takes vacations, too.

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