He gets us. 

She was amazed and perplexed when He asked her for a drink.  And today, we still wonder, What on earth do I have to offer Him?  He sees, He knows and He loves…me (?!?)…

And while the mountains stand tall and strong and speak to us of victory and grandeur as we long so very often for the exhileration of the mountaintop experience, a walk across the cool, wet grass this morning, breathing in the heavy, moist air reminded me that the ” valley experience” is so good for my soul.

Song of Solomon 6.11  “I went down to the garden…to see the verdure of the valley, to see whether the vine had budded and the pomegranites has bloomed…”

or

“Je suis descendue au jardin des noyers, Pour voir la verdure de la vallée, Pour voir si la vigne pousse, Si les grenadiers fleurissent.”  (Sometimes the Bible just sounds so good in a different language, thank-you www.biblegateway.com!)

I love the mountain top.  But I live in the valley, where “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul” (Ps 23).

How green is my valley…J

BTW – several translations of the verse I referenced from the Song of Solomon actually say, “I went down to the garden of nuts…”  And that is where I live, too, among a bunch of nuts!

“…the fear of man will prove to be a  snare…”  Proverbs 29.25

A snare is a dangerous trap, or as Mary Jean teaches, the equivalent of a noose around your neck – choking the life out of you.

The anecdote to fearing people and their opinions or expectations of you is not an assertive training class or joining Toastmasters, or puffing up your independance level.  That is a world system for sure.   The answer is to fear God alone, trust Him and then love.

“There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear…” (1 John 4.18 NIV)

The Message translates it this way: The fear of human opinion disables, but trusting in God protects you from that (Prov. 29.25).   There is no room in love for fear.  Well-formed love banishes fear.  Since fear is crippling, a fearful life – fear of death, fear of judgement – is one not yet fully formed in love (1 John 4.18)

Now in pursuit of that kind of Love…J

NOTE TO SELF:  Fear of opinion, of rejection, of not having approval not only cripples me, it stops others from being a recipient of the love of God through me.  I have handicapped people as I have held the noose in place grasping at what will take my life rather than save it.  Ridiculous.

I have read through the Bible in a year, but not that many times, frankly.  For 3 years in a row I read the OT through once and the NT through twice. I enjoyed getting more New Testament during that plan.  But I have also taken a lot longer and though I don’t get the mark on my scoreboard, I really enjoy the Word.  Time in the Word is time with the Word…

Some people keep track of how many times they have read the entire Bible through in a year like they are gathering up Super Bowl rings or something.   My preference would be to relish the Word, study deep and meander through it.  And sometimes I just don’t read it often enough.  Let’s be honest. 

But here I am – attempting this marathon read-through.  I started a couple of days late and totally lost control while I was in Kentucky.  I am in  Numbers.  I should be reading the end of Joshua.

Will she make it?  Will she know Him more by the end?

Lord, I don’t just want to do this to say I have done it, but I want to hear You and know more of You and learn to be like You.  May Your Word do a work in my heart this summer.  Help me to hide Your Word in my heart, to meditate on Your precepts and laws.  Your Word is eternal and established and is my delight.  This summer as I feast on this living Word, I will also obey it, Lord.  Teach  me, change me…

The challenge – The Bible in 90 days (June 1 – August 29)  http://www.biblein90days.com/index.php?option=com_challenge&pgID=5  “Dive into the Good Book and read the Bible from cover to cover before summer ends. The Bible in 90 Days Summer Reading Challenge is designed to unify your whole church family in a simple but life-changing goal – to read every word of the Bible this summer.”

I much prefer digging in deep and taking more time, but there is also the beauty of immersion.  The summer seems a ridiculous time for it (with a family reunion, traveling, vacation and a little thing called Heaven Fest), but that is what is intriguing me….

Because it seems earlier.  I have known Your love as I have received each grandchild into my arms for the first time.  I have understood Your devotion in raising my children from the first to the last, all the way until it was finished.  When they were birthed from my body into the world, I grasped the glorious moment of man’s creation as “heaven and earth” passed through me.  At the altar of marriage I sensed the abiding gift of Your love over my life – mine to receive.

So when did You begin to love me?

Zechariah 12.1  Was it when You stretched out the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth, could You already comprehend the spirit You would form in me?

Ecclesiastes 11.5  Was it when you were forming my body in my mother’s womb – just as surely as You created the paths for the winds?

Psalm 139.13-16  Or was it when You created my inmost being, as You were knitting me together in my mother’s womb? 

Could it have been before that, even?  Did You already “get” me, decide to love me when I was being made in the ’secret place,’  woven together in the depths of the earth, where already, You understood the look, the frame of me? 

Before even one of my days had come to be, You had already written the book, told the story of my life – every single day of it.  Did You like what You had written?  Could You see me as a character You loved and wanted to follow?  You are my Author.  Are You finishing my story in a way that brings You joy?

Job 10.8-12  You gave me life and watched over my spirit, the soul of me,  even as Your hands touched me, shaped me like clay and molded and made me.  When You were knitting me together and clothing me with skin and flesh – is that when You began to love me?

Isaiah 49.1-2  Before I was even born You called me and at my birth You named me.  You gave me unmistakeable characteristics.  Why?

Jeremiah 1.4-5  Before I was even born, You set me apart and made an appointment for my life.  Before I was born You knew me.  You knew me.  How?  How did You know?

When did You start to love me? 

Galatians 1.15-16   Was it when you set me apart from birth, calling me by Your grace?  Is this when You started loving me?

I don’t know when.  I cannot comprehend how.  But I am so thankful for Your love.  That You – so loved – even me.

“How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God.  They cannot be numbered.  I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!  And when I wake up, You are still with me.”  Psalm 139. 17-18  NLT

This is my 500th blog post!  Very cautiously and nervously entering the blog world in November of 2006, I find I can now blather endlessly about the minutia of my life, even sharing my most embarrassing moments in the mix.

But still, I write it for my children and family.  That has always been the point.  And because my mom likes it.  But mostly for my children.

Because between the silly and the mundane, I have also exposed and cast down sin as it has been revealed to me.  I have spoken truths almost too unbearable to reveal in the light of day and I have written the things that someday they will look back on and read and see as an altar, a guidepost and landmark - the place where the truth of heaven was spoken and remembered in my life.  And it will become for them, eventually, if not now, the wisdom that will keep them on the right path.

“Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set.”  Proverbs 22.28 NKJV

The coolest thing now, though, is realizing a promise of God to me in my lowest hour – that there would also be spiritual children, that I would be increased and multiplied, that I will continue to be vigorous and bear fruit in old age.  And true to His promise, my family enlarges (it has even happened through this blog!).  My capacity to love is increased.

So, for the children I know and the ones I have yet to meet, I write.  And I write. 

And I write what I have heard, what I have seen with my own eyes, what I have observed, and what I have touched with my own hands in the hopes that these things will be received in the spirit with which they are given and that they will, in some measure increase your joy (1 John 1.1-4).  May your joy be ever full!

Graphomaniacally yours…Jeanie/mom

NOTE TO SELF: “It is written…” was even for Jesus, a touchstone of proof, a declaration of the “fixedness of the divine record” to the faithfulness of God.  Make my written words nothing less, Lord…

1. You will not be able to see, nor understand what God is up to in your life.  You will feel defeated and exasperated at every setback or delay.  You will frantically try to push against circumstances and curse what you cannot conquer.
2. You won’t hear God’s voice.  You’ll hear from TV, radio, e-mail, advertisers, Linkedin, Facebook, My Space, Twitter, Blackberries, Blueberries, I-pods and MP3s, but you won’t be able to discern what God is saying for direction.  You’ll be confused, overloaded and over-connected.
3. You’ll be spiritually dried up.  You cannot fake green, healthy growth, nor a fresh Word from the Word.
4. Your body will be weakened and you will grow old faster than you should be.  You’ll know when you see your eyes in the mirror.  Who are you kidding?
5. You’ll have a sense of rootlessness, as if you have been pulled from the place you were once planted.  You won’t know where you belong.
6. There will be no fruitfulness right now.  You’ll have only the past to point back to.
7. You can’t praise your way out of a paper bag and even though you consider yourself a witness for Jesus, you are not in any way, shape, or form evidence of Jesus Christ and His grace in your life.

Why are you the one exception to the need for a Sabbath, a day set-apart, holy to the Lord?  Why are you exempt from receiving the blessing God set up for you to refresh, renew, restore, re-establish, and rest?  It doesn’t have to be like this.

The simple solution.

Work 6.  Rest 1.

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.”  Hebrews 4.9-11

“There remains…”  Check out the previous verses to see WHY it remained – and don’t do that!

Wait until I tell you what I have been learning from Psalm 92!!!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  I wonder if people can tell I have been cheating here and there…:{  Don’t ask Dave.  PLEASE!

UPDATE FROM JEANIE/2-26: Yes, maybe I should have called this post, “How everybody knows when I am a Sabbath-breaker,”  but hey, *SMILE!  Especially if you are connected all the ways I mentioned in #2 above, because then, you truly are ON CANDID CAMERA!  Everybody sees you-by your choice!  And they all know.  Hehehe…And it takes one to know one.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.”  Ps 19.7

“He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters.  He restores my soul…”  Ps 23.2-3a

“I will be glad and rejoice in Your love, for You saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul.”  Ps 31.7

“When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ Your love, O LORD, supported me.  When anxiety was great within me,  Your consolation brought joy to my soul.”  Ps 94.18, 19

“Be at rest once more, o my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.  For You, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.”  Ps 116.7-8

Charles Wesley’s famous hymn called Jesus the “Lover of my soul,” and painting a picture of raging waters and a “storm of life” asks, even pleads with Jesus to be his refuge, his hiding place.

But this morning I am singing an older hymn – my current favorite “oldie” written sometime in the 1700’s:  Be Still, My Soul.  Amy Grant has an a m a z i n g rendition of it!

The soul, they say say, is the mind, the will and the emotions part of us.  It is the center of the human personality and at times we think if we could just get past that part of ourselves, we could really serve God, be faithful, be holy.  But I really think Jesus is the Lover of our souls.  I think that is the part of us He created that brings Him a lot of joy.  For even though that is where the anguish and battle of self-rule try to rage, the soul is also the part of us that makes the decision to repent. 

Does He love me?  All of me?  Does He love the mind He created in me?  Does He love my emotions?  Does He love my very personality?  Does some of it need a workover?  Oh, yes, at times.  But we are spirit, soul and body – and He made all of that – on purpose.  He is the lover of my soul.

She emailed me this encouragement yesterday (with just the tiniest bit of editing to protect the innocent):

I think you need to press on. That is my word to your from my own experience. I have allowed despair to thwart forward motion…despair paralyzes [people who] then tuck all hopes and dreams in a little pocket for the good times. It never happens. [The question is] how to rise above and do what we are called to do in the midst of hurt, hopelessness and despair, but I know we are to do it. I am not sure why this Scripture stood out to me this morning but I am thinking it may help both of us.

 Mt. 11:19 – “But wisdom is shown to be right by what results from it.” NLT

Contextually, John the Baptist, in prison, sends his disciples out to find out if Christ is really the Messiah.  Remember, he saw the dove. Why would he wonder now? I think John the Baptist is completely confused by the fact that he is in prison. Why me and why this. 

A little further on Jesus says, “For John the Baptist didn’t drink wine and he fasted and you say, he’s demon possessed. I, the Son of Man, feast and drink and you say, He’s a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of the worst sinners.”  Then he says “But wisdom is shown to be right by what results from it.”

Sometimes in life, nothing makes sense. Decisions we make to do something for God seem completely out of the norm and make no sense to the others…Just like Jesus said, they are going to say whatever, but in the end, the wisdom will prove itself by the results. I realize it is so hard to trust what you believe God is saying and just do it, but I say, do it. The results will prove the wisdom in it.

Anyway, just a thought or so….love you.. Robin

 

I am so blessed, Robin.  Thanks for hanging in there with me…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Beg God to restore the years the locust has eaten.  It is ridiculous to live without the beauty of the relationships we could be having…

pictured: some business cards Stormie was helping Robin put together.  Not sure which one she finally chose (or if i was a combination of a couple), but I obviously love the red one on the bottom and that charcoal gray and red one on the top right!