Dust and Rain

  Dust swirled.  It reminded me of our hearts.  Dry. Weary.  A failing of such promise.  A spring with no rain following a winter without snow.  Hot holy week.  The soil scorched like our hearts.  The rivers had no winter melt surge.  Sounds like our lives.  Sounds like my life.  Where is the promise?  The failures, the foibles. Call them what they are: SIN.  Sin everywhere.  Wreaking havoc.   Destroying relationships.  I feel the crust forming.
The battle with bitterness.  
The battle with self-love. 
The battle with self-righteousness.
One battle that I find so hard to fight.   I feel I fall from bitterness to self-righteousness to self-love to .... 

For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against my members.  

This near daily struggle.  I have a brother that hates me.   I pause to even mention it because I do not trust my heart on this matter.  It has been years in the making.  Years in the playing out.  I tire...
Season pass.  I think my heart is healed.  Relationship no.  Heart yes.  Then recently day after day. Waves returned by three fingered "read between the lines".  The gut wrenches.  Even as I write.  A hello returned with in days by being almost driven off the road.  Recently these things have escalated.  The dust was blowing across the growing bareness of my heart.  Bitterness and self-righteousness rearing their ugly heads. 

Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Our great weekend of hope.  Christ's victory! The cross!!! The empty grave!!!
The rains started falling...

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.  For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.  By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

 And fell all week.  A specific timely encounter and my heart is before my eyes.   And Christ's reign is on my heart.

[Walk] according to the Spirit...those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit...To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace...But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you."

 So, I run to the Word.  Repentance.  Romans. The rain falls...soft and long. And I recall...

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs-heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
-Romans 7-8

Thank you Lord for...

220.  The beauty of chlorophyll.

221.  The beauty of chlorophyll and sunshine at work after warm rains.

222.  That Christ doesn't leave us to our own devices and efforts.

223.   miles and miles of safe, fun travel with my peeps.

224.   grace.  Without we would have nothing good.

225.  predominantly healthy cattle through the calving season so far.

226.  fat, lazy, friendly dogs.

227.  those who are the front lines giving their lives for the Gospel

228.  being able to watch my son grow.

229.  the crack of dawn at 6:00am

230.  birds praising their maker each dawn.

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New Life

The celebration of new life is coming.

"We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.  For one who has died has  been set free from sin.  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again;  death no longer has dominion over him,  For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God."

However, first...

"For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."

Today was full.
Frustrated/futility , groaning/anger, new birth.
Lunch came late.  What was almost ready was soon to wait.
Two feet for too long.  Only two feet, nothing more. 
And so the need to explore this dilemma.  Two feet for too long. Only two feet, nothing more is not good.
New life comes "easy" to the heifer bred with Jersey.
Only two feet, nothing more should not be.
An anomaly.
Frustration.
Antithesis!
The calving gear gathered.  Chains on dainty legs.
Calf gone backward? Head Back? Leg down? My thoughts whorl.
The heifer lays there waiting, pushing, straining.  Pains of childbirth, but new life has not come.
Hours have passed, but now help has come, hope has come. Seemingly.
The heifer has had enough of this help.  She moves on, on, and on.  Help tries, but only ends up groaning, angry, wrath quickly rising.

"But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness."

God is! Today I fail at imitating.  
More help comes.  The one who knows what it is to be in the throws of childbirth.  The one who understands.  The one quick to speak peace to a mother in distress.  My anger persists as my phone disseminates, and I become covered in what is now spewing out of my mouth.

Then the one who knows being a mother prevails.  The unbound is bounded and he who is all too familiar with a desperate need for grace gets to the work of birthing.
The answer. A head back. Dainty as are the legs.
Tired arms push legs back in.  The mother groans like none yet heard from her.  She can not understand.  Only one thought, one object. EXPEL THE CALF!
Yet as Christ knows the painful work that needs to be done,

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

so he with tired arms knows the only way out is by going back in.  This calf will only come through his work.  The harder she tries on her own the worse her situation will be.  As with us we must rely on His wisdom, His ways, His work, not our own.
Soon the legs are back in.  A tired arm finds a head and wrestles it in to place.  It must come with the feet.
Now the real pushing can be done.  Now the work of redemption.  Now comes new life by him of aching body.

" But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed."  -Isaiah 53:5

Click below for more thoughts on new life as we prepare to celebrate Easter...

Knowing what to expect

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. -Psalm 86:15 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation. -Exodus 34:6,7

God can not be unfaithful to himself. The weight of that is heavy in substance and light to carry. A God in whom we can depend. No inconsistency. We need not fear that he will abandon us to our own demise. We have hope because...

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. -Romans 3:21-25

Because of this we are not guilty. Because of this we have hope. For I am not consistent. Sin abounds. Some days I feel overrun. Days I feel victorious are more like I am going over the falls Raurus,


opposed to raftless in the North Sea.

There is no true hope in my self sustained situation. Even with being sanctified, being made like Jesus, I would still die. I am not good, and definitely not good enough. I know my sin, it is ever before me. And I pray more so daily. Why, that I might feel even more overwhelmed by grace that Christ has poured out.

I think on what my son has to deal with. An earthly father who struggles to realize Hebrews 12 for his son in a way that he knows what to expect. Something for which he, not alone, longs. Yet there is hope for him. The Father who is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Christ died that I, the non-faithful, the non-consistent might be saved?!

Because of this great hope, I know that I am neither as Boromir over Raurus, nor the Titanic. But instead I am safe, because Christ took my sin upon himself.
Hope waits for me. Hope draws me in. Hope leads me on...