changing blogs. :)
a brother noted that the advertisements on xangas were really inappropriate. SO, to help him out, I'm moving my blog to a server with less scandalous ads.

follow me if you will.
grace and peace.

KJ

http://writinginpraise.blogspot.com/

What do I sound like in the spirit realm?

It was a question I asked myself as a friend and I meandered amongst Meijer's perennials, herbs, fronds, and vines. She held a wind chime—a hummingbird—that fluttered up and down as she stepped. With a graceful lightness she stepped, as perhaps a faery might, poised and eloquent. Each step released into the air a glimmering cascade of sound, like water on rock trickling down... Merry, graceful, sonorous.

There are sounds in the spirit—Scripture records them. (As the four living creatures moved, Ezekiel describes hearing “the sound of their wings like the sound of many waters, like the sound of the Almighty, a sound of tumult like the sound of an army.” E. 1:24. Or, in Acts 2:2, “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a migty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.”) Do we make sounds as we move about through life also, as my dear friend did as she moseyed through the verbiage?

I wonder if we have individual songs, or notes, uniquely ours. Perhaps we change in sound too, with emotions or around other people. Then again, maybe we’re constant in our effervescent music. Whatever the case, our melodies must sound like the Almighty…extremely minutely, of course, but in His image.

In an abstract reality, we ARE His sound in the earth.

If I did have a sound, I hope it would be like wind chimes. It’s probably one of my most favorite sounds. Its very delicious to my soul…that, and the alluring cry of a violin. Maybe I sound like the sea? What do dancing faeries sound like? What about a choir of whispered mysteries?

What does Love sound like??

Mephi trembled in the servant’s arms, mouth suddenly dry, as Ziba approached the royal house. Actually, she was quaking, the fear rooted in her belly growing until it manifested physically. She closed her eyes and tried to swallow--dear God!--what did the King want with her? Panic flashed white-hot through her body, crippled legs and all. She jolted in Ziba’s arms as though slapped awake, and the servant who carried her glanced down, sharp gaze softening in concern. He paused on the inner stair; less than a hundred yards away was the throne room...and her death, surely.
“Are you okay?”
Was she okay? she stared blankly. The King of Israel had summoned her out of the blue, and hastily. She was a great-granddaughter of Saul, former King of Israel. No intelligent ruler allowed for relations of the former reign to survive, not if he wanted to be sure no one would usurp his kingdom. And she? She was the family member that was left. Her face twisted. Please, God. She was an easy target, too, since she couldn’t run.
“I...I...” She clutched Ziba’s linen shirt in desperation, silently pleading him not to let her go. She barely managed to shake her head, loosening the ratty shawl that shielded her from sunlight, though moreso from the pitying gazes of others. But it was thin, and her skin was browned from many hours begging at the well in Lo-debar, her hometown.
Ziba didn’t respond verbally. But she rose and fell as he sighed; her mass see-sawed as he shifted his arms to hold her more firmly. He may have had serious, piercing eyes, but she could feel compassion seeping from him onto her like a balm. Maybe he could do something to prevent the King from lobbing off her head. Please, Yahweh...please...! Have mercy!
The door was closed. The entrance to the throne room was wide and made of silver, which surprised her, as she expected everything of the King’s to be gold. Her grandfather had had chairs and cups and vases and pounds upon pounds of golden everything. Instinctively she hunched into the far recesses of her shawl--there was power behind those doors, power that could steal away her very life. Two guards stood visibly taller and more alert than before as they approached, their eyes narrowing, warily sizing them up. Ziba bowed his head to the guard on the left, whose face gentled in recognition, the stern lines around his eyes losing their sharpness.
“Commander...” Ziba greeted him softly.
“Ziba.” He returned, his eyes rotating to look at the sack of bones in Ziba’s arms, at the waif with a pleasant--albeit utterly terrified--countenance. His eyebrow lifted in query.
“Mephibosheth was summoned by King David yesterday.” A statement not meant to be questioned further.
Commander grunted and motioned to his apprentice.
The shivers started again--she was suddenly cold; the blood seemed to have flushed out of her body via her toes. She shoved her face into Ziba’s chest, faintly aware of her childishness, though she had just recently turned twenty. She could hear her frantic pulse--and Ziba’s steady one-- in her ears. The doors made no sound as the royal guards swing them open.


David sat on his throne, hand cupping his chin as he listened to a reading from a scroll. A scribe, an older man who stood to his right, read in monotone yesterday‘s affairs. As Ziba stepped forward, she could make out the faint scritch scritch of diligent scribes, bent over their scrolls, copying the Torah or yesterday’s happenings in the King’s assembly. If she hadn’t been  so afraid, she would’ve looked around slowly to quietly observe the room where she used to visit her great grandfather. The room was filled with at least two dozen men writing at portable desks. Every so often a scribe would reverently breathe a word of thanksgiving into the quietness, but otherwise, there was a gracious, almost peaceful hush. The calm before the storm. From square windows twenty feet above their heads, sunlight danced down and rested upon the scribes' graying heads. They were so busy that not one bothered to look at Ziba as he approached with his charge. But presently the King lifted his eyes to behold them. And suddenly standing to receive them, he held out a hand to still the oration of the scribe.
Mephi darted a quick look at the King’s face, stunned at what she saw there: an eager curiosity and a kindness that made his eyes glow with a smile. His lips seemed to be toying with the idea.
“Ziba!” David exclaimed, spreading wide his arms. The smile came then. The King’s eyes alighted upon the frail one in the servant’s arms. “Mephibosheth?”
At her name, Mephi jerked her head away. She tried to level the tremor that was her voice. “Y..y...yes, m..mm..My Lord.”
King David’s servant lowered Mephibosheth to the cool floor; she spread her fingers on the smooth surface, slowly letting her body sag onto it. She wished she could sink into it instead. Trying to still her heart’s panicky fluttering, she swung her crooked limbs beneath her and to the side. Somewhere in the space between her last couple of ragged breaths, Ziba had vacated her vicinity in favor of a place along the wall in the shadows. God, you are my Strong Tower, my Protector...You are here with me, even as I am afraid, hide me in the shadow of Your wings---
The King’s shadow fell on her crouched, broken body. Mephi felt the air slip from her lungs. A blink, then oxygen was roughly dragged in again. This was it. This was the end. Surely He would be graciously swift in ending her life...


To-B-continued

This week my step dad hired men to trim some of the many trees in our yard. As I watched them from a distance (to avoid wayward branches from bonking me on the head), I couldn’t help but smile to myself at the spiritual-ness of what was occurring in the natural. Mature trees being trimmed, pruned, dead limbs being removed so that more energy, food, could be used in areas of the tree that were still alive and growing.

Huh.

A lot of wounds and fears and crap, to put it mildly, from my past has been re-surfacing since I’ve been home for the summer...I think God wants to show me how dead, how much of a non-issue the things in my past are--having been crucified with Christ and their power over me thus destroyed--as well as how He wants to remove them for good so that I can grow in other areas. Hack away, Abba. And I’ll try not to protest too loudly, which, if I were a tree, would be the equivalent of which would be flailing my barky limbs manically to free myself from Your gentle, all-knowing hands...  Oy.


So. In my front yard is a huge Plantae Magnoliophyta Magnoliopsida Fagales Fagaceae Quercus...ie., Oak tree. Quercus for short.  This tree is at least one hundred years old. Yeah!! Wow, right? We’re talking massive tree. Huge. I mean, it’s been there longer than my grandparents were alive. And still today it spreads wide its emerald hands, a windswept banner of safety, over our entire lawn, saving the grass from being scorched and shading my family from sunburn. It is breath-taking...yet when I stand beneath it, I feel like I am receiving breath; I can relax better...like between its boughs exists a permeable umbrella that lets the rain of freedom and life (and oxygen, of course) fall down on me...

What awes me even more about this tree is that it has not one trunk, but three; each shaft, thick and healthy and proudly gnarled, shoot heavenward in a mystical, triune oneness. Reminds me of Someone I know. 

I think that the Quercus in my front yard is one of the most majestic trees I have ever beheld.


I’ve heard that the root system of a tree might equal the density of foliage that sprouts on the flipside. I’ll bet the plumbing system of the massive oak tree in our yard is impressive, to say the least.  But seriously--if the upside equals the underside, I pray that the extent to which I am “rooted and grounded” in Christ shows up just as wide and strong and beautiful in the natural...