Psalm 37.....

This Week of Prayer, today being Epiphany (day of light), has kept me near the cross.

Today I read Psalm 37:1-9 which says in The Message:

" 1-2 Don't bother your head with braggarts or wish you could succeed like the wicked. In no time they'll shrivel like grass clippings and wilt like cut flowers in the sun.

3-4 Get insurance with God and do a good deed, settle down and stick to your last. Keep company with God, get in on the best.

5-6 Open up before God, keep nothing back; he'll do whatever needs to be done: He'll validate your life in the clear light of day and stamp you with approval at high noon.

7 Quiet down before God, be prayerful before him. Don't bother with those who climb the ladder, who elbow their way to the top.

8-9 Bridle your anger, trash your wrath, cool your pipes—it only makes things worse. Before long the crooks will be bankrupt; God-investors will soon own the store."

Lord God of heaven and earth, this Epiphany, this "Day of Light", keep my ways shining as brilliant rays of sun..........even as bright as a full moon on a dark night.

Amen.

The prophet Jeremiah...

says these words in chapter 17:9-10, 14 about our hearts:

"Who can understand the human heart?

There is nothing else so deceitful; it is too sick to be healed.

I, the Lord, search the minds and test the hearts of people.

I treat each of them according to the way they live, according to what they do.

Lord, heal me and I will be completely well;

rescue me and I will be perfectly safe.

You are the one I praise."

Being prayer week at Gateway, I have found myself going again and again into a time of confession, of letting God know that I'm acknowledging what he already knows and telling him I am sorry.

So, I pray for myself, in those secret places that only God knows about. Those things I don't want to say out loud, for fear others will hear. Those things that I dare not talk about. I think you know about those things too....

I pray, O God, for me and my friends, those of us caught up in lies and deceit, of self-absorption and self-righteousness, of scheming and coniving, of loving everything else but You.

O God, hear my prayer of confession and repentance.

Bitter....

Yes, the bitter, biting, beastly, frost-laden days of winter are upon us.

Minus 36. If you say it quickly while you sneeze it doesn't sound near so bad.

The sun appears to be rising sometime after 9 a.m. and setting around 5 p.m.

The snow continues to rise in drifts of hard-packed ridges across fence lines and piles of it are puffed up on fir tree limbs.

It makes for a wondrous sight.

And in the middle of all this cold, Gateway will hold Prayer Week 2009. Within the confines of the sanctuary, sit stations of prayer and quietness and opportunities for expression of praise and petition to God.

A beautiful way to begin the New Year.......acknowledging God...who has given us every bit of creation for us to enjoy.........even at -36C.

May THAT God be the focus of my life and my world in the coming weeks and months.

The Journey Part 2....

This book has me journeying back to my own personal Shack...the place where God once sat with me and held me and allowed me to see value in myself. He spoke to me of grace and offered it as a gift. I sat a very long while in that Shack before I would accept his gift, but eventually, I did.

Reading this book by Paul Young, is giving me new insight as to what God may or may not look like. It looks "outside the box" of the Christian view of the Trinity. I like what I'm reading. Sometimes, for various reasons in our lives, we look at God like some kind of harsh father figure, or the Holy Spirit as someone who is elusive and a non-entity and Jesus as a brilliant miracle worker who lived some 2000 years ago and we celebrate his birthday every year at Christmas. The book is a revolutionary thinking to me. I know I need to keep it in perspective, but it seems like that kind of thinking has been proding me for some time now so I will keep on. It will be a learning time, I believe, when all is "read and done".

So, I'm journeying back a bit. The one good thing about going there this time is, that I can simply follow my own footsteps back out to today, whenever I wish. I remain there only because I want to and because I may learn something very valuable this time that I can take back out with me.

When I'm finished and begin to read it for the second time, I'll be doing some underlining. I like doing that. It reinforces things for me. Things I need to learn or remember so my life can become better, more loving and kind, more gentle and gracious.

Going back to The Shack will bring about some changes in me, I'm convinced. Things I thought were healed long ago, perhaps are not. We'll see. At various times, when we have experienced deep pain in our lives, we find it difficult to go back to that pain. But it is a must. We must face the things that hold us captive and eventually find peace there instead of the pain.

The journey back continues. There are lessons yet to be learned.

I'm on a journey...

I'm reading this book entitled "The Shack" by Paul Young. I saw a partial interview with him on T.V. the other day.

It sounded like he was telling people my own life story, to a greater degree.

I know several people who are also reading it. So Amazon.ca came to my rescue. I began listening to the story of a man who meets God in The Shack.

I'm looking forward to hearing how he tells my story......well, my story and thousands of others like mine, if the truth be told.:-) It's difficult facing truths about ourselves, isn't it. It's hard falling into the abyss....and wanting to stay there! From my own story, I have found a God who, at one point in my life, fell into the abyss with me and he allowed my foot to rest on his hand as he pushed me upward from the depths...step by step. Journeys like that take a while.

Sometimes life is just difficult. Sometimes though, we make it difficult. I shall go now and read some more.

I'll keep you updated.

Cold...

Before the wind came there were layers upon layers of snow perching precariously on every tree limb, no matter what angle it was situated.

Then the wind came. Blowing and shwooooshing and howling and making like a mad shopper at a Boxing Day sale....pushing everything in site.

It's all very beautiful. The snow. The wind. The bare trees shivering without their steady pulse of 'sugar' and warmth.

I haven't been outside for several days now, so I'm missing out on some exceptional photo ops...but at least my fingers are fairly warm being inside and all.....I say fairly, because living in an old home, you don't get the modern protection of new triple pane windows, not to mention a bathroom fan to relieve the windows of their condensation build-up.

The cold weather has brought with it great amounts of frost on the bathroom window. Kind of reminds me of "the olden days" when I was a child and could only see out of a quarter of our windows every winter.

But son and girlfriend bought me new mitts for Christmas. Think I'll go and wear them for a bit.

Happy 2009!!

Wheeeehooooooo....

Although here there is no moonlight, only wind and snow falling....there's a moon shining above the clouds.

I hope I remember that this year. I have a strange feeling that I really should remember that.

Happy New Year.........it's January 1, 2009 at 12:19 a.m. and I figured while making a potty break, I'd also do a blog thing, since it's a new year and all.

Blessings on you all.......and remember, don't party too hard and expect to enjoy the rest of the day......;-)

'Nite...