Category: Renewal

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Sink A New Well

Lord, what am I finishing up today, and what am I beginning or renewing tomorrow? What unfinished business do I need to tend to?

I have already arranged something greater than you could have imagined. You don’t have to figure out how about anything. Put your considerable intellect at the service of incredible inspiration. That is another way to say, let your heart lead. You have been living way out of balance, trying to analyze everything and stuffing down your feelings and fears. You need to live in heart and vision. What did I ask Jeremiah? “What do you see?” That is My question to you, spiritually and creatively. As a photographer and as a person, Eve, what do you see?

“Open the eyes of my heart” needs to be your prayer. “Renew my vision, Lord,” is the only now-and-tomorrow prayer you need to remember. You are straining to see through walls and around curves. I have Beauty for you right here. Right now. I don’t want you to pre-visualize; that is not your strength or your gift. I want you to react in the moment to what you see and feel. When I say to see with your heart, come back to your feelings. What do you feel? What emotions are prompted by what you see? How can you convey that emotional response visually, using the scene before you? You already know connection is a keyword with birds and all critters. Ask Me how to receive connecting images in the landscape too—connecting with the land’s voice, or with My Spirit through the landscape, or with the heart of your eventual viewer.

Stop and feel. Let feeling inform your seeing. Allow yourself a wider range of feeling. You might explore feeling frisky, playful, frivolous, mischievous. Think theatrically. Think character and costume and fantasy. Think party and celebration and a good time.

Lord, I keep hearing “playful.”

Yes, I want you to grow younger again. You are not immature but innocent, guileless, trusting, gentle. You are not irresponsible—you are so overly responsible you are literally working and worrying and burdening yourself into an early grave. I have much for you to do, and to see, and to experience and to enjoy—but none of that will happen for you if you continue to drive yourself into the ground. The unfinished business you have today is with you. I want you to unlock the ball and chain you have wrapped around your feet and your hands and your heart. I want you to loose you. I want you to set you free. If I told you that you were totally free, what would you do? Who would you be?

You’ve believed a lie that says you must keep pumping harder when the well is running dry. No, you need to sink a new well.

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On The Edge

Lord, why am I fatigued?

 

Seriously? You are asking Me why you are fatigued?

Look in the mirror. Pull back and watch your life as you would watch a movie about someone else. What would you say about the character who is you?

Driven, Lord. I’d say driven. Obsessed, even.

 My word says, Be Still and Know. Not, Be Frantic and Know. You are on the edge of a breakdown and you don’t even see it. You are right at the precipice—physically, emotionally, spiritually. Everyone around you sees it. Who are you trying to prove yourself to? The one with the most stress loses.

 So, Lord, here I am.

And Here I Am. But you have not let Me be I AM, your I Am. You have thought you needed to be I am—and especially for everyone else: I am efficient, I am calm, I am a good friend, I am faithful, I am kind, I am loving, I am creative…and you are all those things. But who, Who, is I AM for you? You ask Me for strength and for wisdom so you can continue to be “I am” for all those people. I want to be I AM for you. You ask Me, what can I do? What can I give? And I keep saying, Receive. Let’s increase the flow in your life. You are trying hard to be the riverbed and the spring. Not out of ego but out of a misplaced sense of duty and obligation, as if you had to prove both your love and your worth. For a little while, the only Believing Mirror I want you to look into is Me, not My Word, which you still interpret through older, poisoned voices, but My Eyes. Let My Eyes become your Believing Mirror. Let Me show you what I see, and what I foresee, what I envision.

First, you don’t generate the power, the electricity, the current—I do. Let Me clean off the terminals, the connections, that have become corroded. My cleansing is gentle and with you consists mostly in removing old layers of fear and guilt and shame which have no place in your life today. They are like barnacles; they slow you down. And when you try to pry them off yourself, they only make you bleed and ultimately suffer more.

 

I did not plan humanity for suffering. I planned humanity for bliss. That is why the goal of Buddhism is bliss; otherwise the goal would be increased suffering which anyone but the mentally ill can see is wrong. Buddhism has it almost all right. Life can be hard because of humanity’s choices, not by My design.

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Pray for New Things

Lord, You keep talking to me about change, and about fresh. But Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun. Right?

What about “His mercies are new every morning” in the Psalms? What about Isaiah’s “Behold I am doing a new thing?” What about the “I make all things new” as a final promise in scripture? What about those?

You have to discern who is talking when you read sacred words or words that purport to be sacred. “A tree is known by its fruit,” remember? There is a fatalistic cynicism that masquerades as religion. Some of the tenets of that belief system are that human actions are pointless, that everything that happens is pre-arranged and that humans are merely puppets in some Divine morality play. That belief system bears fruits of despair, apathy, helplessness, and hopelessness. Does that sound like a tree of My planting?

How about this? Every human born has limitless potential to be unique and to offer the world a fresh perspective on life, on love, on joy. Every expression of personality, every latent talent, every overt impulse to creativity are all gifts of the Divine ensconced in humanity. The great challenge for every human born is to become. To become the best self possible.

Lord, then what about tragedies? What about kids born in poverty? Born in abuse? Born into the drug culture? Born in war-torn villages? Born sick from day one? What about them?

Do you think My Love for these, for those the world would term “the least of them” is less than My Love for those born into wealth? Into health? Into loving, caring homes? Do you think I rank-order by circumstance?

No, of course not. But I think so many have the odds against them before they even start out. And it’s not fair. I’m sorry to say it that way. But take me—I was born late, to a family that very much wanted a child. I was loved, cherished, taken care of. I had so many advantages even in being born to older parents. And I had difficulties too, like no grandparents because of that. But my folks really wanted me, and I have carried that knowledge, and their telling me I was special, all these years. So I had a head start over so many others.

And you have felt guilty for your advantages. Isn’t that true? You have felt ashamed of having such love, and over being gifted in the areas you are. Listen to Me. Every child is gifted. Every child born is loved by Me. But I don’t wave some magic wand and send a child into hell on earth or heaven on earth. Children are conceived naturally, and not everyone who conceives is an ideal parent. Inherent in that conception is a spark of divinity that includes creativity, personality, and the capacity to give and receive love. Some have those gifts cut short before they can even be opened. You have heard there is great joy among angels when someone decides to change their path for good, for the better. Well, there is also great sorrow among angels for every injustice, for every life cut short before its potential is realized. Eventually, on humanity’s last day, there will be no more tears. That is the day of rejoicing that is coming, for all of creation.

But what about now? What do we do about now?

Follow your heart. Follow your path. You love to pray—pray for newborns, pray for foster families, pray for communities where drugs and gangs have taken over. Pray for peace. And don’t buy into the cynicism that says nothing can change, or that there is no possibility of newness in these homes, in these families, in these communities, in these villages, in these nations. Pray for New Things to increase and abound. Pray for a spreading ripple of grace and mercy, of kindness and compassion. Pray for hearts to rule hands and heads. Ask, and watch how you receive. For your very act of asking can change the flow of events, can alter circumstances, can reveal choices to others that might otherwise go unnoticed and unheeded. Pray for miracles of enlightenment. Pray for aha moments all over the globe. What do you have to lose? Try praying instead of lamenting, and see what happens.

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More on Rhythm

I feel a little blinky yet. Need to make my smoothie, shower, make to do lists. What I really need–always–is to hear from You. 

The thoughts of future upset, of attacks, do not serve either you or Me. They assume you will be alone, unguided, unprotected. They confuse your earthly and heavenly sources, and they forget Who I Am—Who I Am in your daily life.

I am asking you to live out your daily life—all of it—from a position of trust in Me and connection to Me. I am asking you to listen for My Heartbeat in each day, and to match your rhythm of thought and action to Mine. In this way, compassion will balance joy. Action will balance rest. Outflow will be balanced by inflow. In fact, inflow has to be at least double the outflow: inflow to sustain you, and inflow to share with others.

So again, the keyword is Receive. And for right now, what I want you to receive is rhythm. Let’s slow the tempo now. Let’s have some soaring symphonic experience and expression.

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Follow the Stream

So, Lord, what would You say, to my tired body and my somewhat stressed mind?

You keep laying an axe to your own growth. I Am trying to grow you in a new direction. Think of your life path like a compass. Think of people relocating. They are not trying to re-create the same look, the same experience-otherwise, why move? But that is what you have been trying to do. I have been calling you into new and fresh and you have been trying to survive on leftovers, on stale and in some cases spoiled leftovers. You want fresh but you don’t want change. But you need change. You—especially—need change. You are like an octopus; you need new experiences. It is how you thrive. You want Time to stand still or flow backwards and I want Time to carry you as a river, around the bend to new and never-imagined vistas. Maybe you have flashed hot and gone cold because you can’t reconcile how to grow and have balance while you stretch into new directions.

What directions, Lord? I am seeing a sort of sprawling live oak, growing where the wind has sculpted its path from behind.

The force of the river can be said to be from behind but we think of rivers as flowing towards. Think of the wind as blowing towards.

Towards what? Towards where?

Towards a life of Adventure and Experience. Towards a path that opens before you as you walk it. Towards a trail that you blaze, with your words and your work. You need time for words—your own and others’—and you need music—your own and others’. And you need beauty. And you need serenity. And you need vibrancy. And you need customers, paying patrons, for all of it.

And my part is?

 Your part is to keep walking. To follow the stream. To let the River flow where it will. To listen for My Voice. I do not drive you in a wilderness, I lead you through pastures of plenty, pastures of green. Stay in Psalm 23 a while. Stay in Psalm 23 until you see it fresh, every day, in your own experience.

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Nurture your inner life

God, do You—You always do—have anything to say to me today?

Breathe. Being frantic or fretting won’t help you. It won’t help your body or your mind, and it won’t help you get more done. Consider the lilies. Consider the thought that I love you just as you are right now, even while drawing you on to greater growth. Every winter, underground, lilies multiply. The “more blooms” that appear above ground come from more bulbs underground. Nurture your inner life, your underground life.

How do you do that? Worship is one way, because you are focused on Me and all I Am in your life and in the universe. Not sermons, not fellowship—as good as they may be, they don’t multiply your bulbs. Random acts of kindness, compassion and thoughtfulness help multiply your outward fruit and influence. Intercession as long as it is not a disguised worry is a bulb-grower.

Notice the metaphors: bulb for flowers and growth; bulb for light; bulb for inspiration, for creative ideas, for epiphanies. Anticipate surprises. Live expectant as you used to, and let your expectation be filled with My Presence, for in My Presence, nothing is impossible, nothing is too hard. The only defeat in My Presence is defeat itself. Defeat is defeated, overcome by victory. Overtaken by Love. Begin to anticipate a healthy body, a healthy lifestyle, a healthy business season. Begin again to visualize thriving. Trust that in this winter, which you are seeing as time lost, trust that underground, within, beneath the surface, is tremendous growth, is a field of multiplied bulbs, all ready, all waiting for the signal to burst forth into glorious flower. “A crop so great you cannot contain it all” – that is My Promise to you, renewed. So much fruit you can easily share, easily Give-Away. Is any of this too hard for God? Am I not God for you? Focus on that.

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Dancing Butterflies

Lord, I knew this new puppy would be exhausting. Thank You, by the way, for the extra hours of sleep last night. I am so grateful for some rest. What I did not anticipate and I don’t know how to handle is that the schedule is making it much harder to have my time in the morning with You. The past few days it has been impossible. Right now it is nearly 6 pm and I am snatching minutes before supper to sit, and think, and talk to You, and feel.

And what do you feel?

Honestly, it wasn’t a bad day. But You said to keep connected to You, and how am I supposed to do that, when I don’t have a regular, concentrated time to journal and to listen?

What did you do this afternoon?

Ran the errands I needed to run. Took Pete to the bank, we stopped at Yellowhouse, came home, put the puppy pen together outside.

Besides all that?

I took a few minutes and photographed the monarch butterflies on my lantana bush.

You noticed them. And you took some time to watch them and then to photograph them.

Yes.

Do you remember the verse that says, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for Me?

Yes, of course.

You treat yourself in your own thinking as less than the least of these. You contributed charitably, you helped your friend get his car, you finished up the long refi at the bank, you did business tasks at home before that and after that…and in the middle of all that, you gave your attention to honor these winged flights of beauty–and you felt guilty for those few minutes. Didn’t you? Isn’t that why you laid your camera down and moved on to another task? All those errands and chores you did to help anyone else, they count for something in your thinking, in your assessment of your day. But taking time to count butterflies? Not so much. Yet those few minutes were actually minutes of serenity and calm for you. And although you were not uttering prayers, you were actually praying the whole time. You were living moments in deliberate honor and gratitude and you were noticing the beauty of your world.

Lord, it was amazing! There were monarchs and painted ladies and I don’t know who all, on that one bush!

There is more than one way to set a bush ablaze. With Moses I chose fire. Today with you, I chose wings the color of flame. Drink beauty like water. That is one more way to stay connected to all that is, and to Me, as the Source and Creator of all that is. I Am glad you enjoyed the dance of the butterflies. You could not hear them, but angels were making the music they could hear and all to refresh you. Now, let me ask you one more question. How do you feel right now?

Relaxed. Refreshed. Grateful. And somehow leaning on You. And You are smiling.

Yes, yes I Am.

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Sourced in God

Gosh, God, the schedule…the stress…I need You to help me so I don’t tumble into either burnout or fallout, meaning broken health. What is your solution for me?

You are not responsible for your family’s—your grandchildren’s—your son’s—happiness. All you can be to anyone is a loving inspiration. Be that. Model what a full life centered in Me looks like. Right now you are modeling a full life centered on your own effort and strength—and it’s not working. It’s not working because you—humans—were never meant to go it alone, by yourselves, or even with one another without Me.

You were meant to be Sourced in Me, My input, My watering, My Presence, My leading, My anointing. Sourced in Me each day, with set-apart times for filling up the well on a regular basis. Make Time to be Renewed in Love. Let Chronos become Kairos again. Right place, right time. Right person—you. Take a next step in this journey we are on together. Renew your pledge to live in synchronicity. Let My Spirit guide you.