Soul Sister Time

              Do you find it hard to thirst for God?   The image is nice, but the reality is harder to experience.   Why is it so easy to get distracted from the experience of quenching our thirst for God?   It seems that everything else takes precedence.   The one experience that will bring priority and wisdom to all other realities in this world is a connection to God, yet it is the hardest to maintain.   It’s so much easier to connect to the stack of bills that must be attended to or the trash that needs to be collected before the priority of thirsting for God.             How did David stay so focused?   He was running from enemies that he knew he had no strength to conquer.   If we have any hope of thirsting for God, we must begin with humility.   Perhaps the reason that all the other things take precedence is because we feel adequate to do those things.   We don’t thirst for God to show us how to order up our day; rather we dig in and in the digging forget that He is the

            I’m grateful for what I don’t know.   God in His goodness keeps all knowledge to Himself. Even after Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we still are blessed not to know some things.   Jesus recognized that He could not tell the disciples all that He knew :   I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now (John 16:12) and that it would be up to the Holy Spirit to fill us in (John 14:26).               Jesus, on the other hand, fully knew what awaited Him in the garden and on the following day of unjust trials ending in His being put to death in the most shameful and inhumane way on the Roman cross.   His prayers for another way were genuine and evidence of His full knowledge of what God had asked of Him.             I’m grateful that God hides what He asks of me in a perfect way.   As I re-witnessed Jesus walking the hardest part of His God-ordained journey, I became more grateful for mine.   God did not tell m

            It’s spring and love is in the air.   You can see it in the tender care the protective parents portray to their newly hatched ducklings.   It is evident from the high ratings of the dating shows that dominate television.   All souls long for true love, though I highly doubt it will be truly experienced after a television dating show.             The Bible tells us: but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).   True love is shown.   Our Easter celebration is a festivity of the love God showed to us through the death of His Son that paid for the sins of all who believe.   There is no greater love found anywhere on this earth than the love of God the Father and His willingness to send His Son.   Jesus showed His love for God as His Father by choosing to obey Him and go to the cross.   Jesus did it for love; primarily His love for His Father and also His love for us.               God has shown His love.   It is

                The fifty days following Easter are called Eastertide.   During these days Christians celebrate Easter.   One of the ways we do that is to keep our spirits connected to the joy of the resurrection.   It takes about fifty days to take in the wonder of God’s recreating work through the cross and the empty tomb of Christ.   Even though Easter was a little early this year, some of us still have definite glimpses of spring to brighten the season.   I was out of town for a couple of days, and it was as if spring fast- forwarded, transforming most of the trees to that brilliant poppy green.   Once barren trees first budded with flowers, and now leaves too numerous to count fill all the branches.   We are still in transition here in Dallas, but you can’t help but feel joy on a warm sunny spring day.                 This same joy fills my heart.   It glazes over all the bitter circumstances that coexist with the joy.   God fills this world of sorrow with glimpses of joy.

              At the beginning of Holy Week I heard a familiar scripture in a new way.   When the reader recited Isaiah 42:1: Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him;   he will bring forth justice to the nations, I thought about God’s soul for the first time.               Before really hearing that scripture, the words soul and delights seemed more applicable to describe something like dark chocolate candy.   Thinking of the pride God the Father takes in presenting to the world God His Son to fix up the problem of sin in the world leaves me in awe.   For the first time I let my mind conceive that God has a soul.   He has a soul like me (or the other way around, He saw fit to give me a soul like His).   His soul is capable of being delighted by Jesus!   His soul longs to be delighted by me.               As I sat in that service, I began to think about the reality that how I live, what I think, the words I spe