Good Morning. Table ready for a party of three...right this way...Filtered sun in my window this morning. I'm ragged without enough sleep, but the brain can't shut down so I'll sit a spell with the three folk who know I'm here...
If I were my sweet friend Sarah I'd have some scrumptious food to tell you about. Descriptions that would make one long for centuries old farmhouse tables with jam fingered children sitting round it, mama in her apron beside a wood cook-stove and roosters crowing in the background. I imagine onto this scene the sound of a screen swinging on it's hinges as husband and oldest return from the milking and little barefooted girls clamber inside, holding tightly to their apron corners lest the precious eggs be dropped. Alas, that isn't my world at all,though I delight in the pictures Sarah shares of her version of it.
As it is, I'm "starving" (if a woman of my shape could be remotely thought to be starving) and doing all I can to forget there are cookies in a box under my bed. How's that for enchanting?
There is contentment...understanding that all our realities have beauty in them, be they in the gritty city or the quiet countryside. Sarah's home-made Rye Bread in her cabin or my "whatever I find to eat that isn't cookies" breakfast. Godliness with contentment is great gain.
Some people don't like that word, Godliness. Another one, Piety, that gets a shudder. Even I, who love the Puritans, those lovers of piety...from whom I learned to be safe in the presence of such words... hold my breath when I read them in anything written by a living soul.
I hold my breath and prepare for brutal assault from whoever is writing it. Will they give me a list for which I do not measure up? Will they tell me it isn't necessary to be Godly? Will they bind my conscience with misapplied mishandled versions of God's law or man made applications I know all too well will trip me up and steal my joy in believing? Will they take my focus off of Him? and His WORD? That word that He was, that word that could touch a leper and leave behind a clean man?
Funny thing, people will write that they aren't making a new kind of legalism, that they are just giving suggestions of things that have helped them to "honor" God more. Be ye holy as I am holy says the Lord.
The difference is, the LORD can make me Holy. Has made me Holy, without spot by his obedience and death upon the cross. An extra biblical list of what that looks like...not so much.
Wow, I said that boldly "He has made me Holy" didn't I...mostly it's prayers upon the pillow,in the shower, in the silence along the way... so aware of my cold heart, of my neglect of HIM, of my spiritual sloth, that cry out "lord, please do not forget me, please do not give up on me, please help me..."
If you cannot pray as you would, nor as you should, pray as well as you can.
~ Thomas Brooks
"God have mercy upon me a sinner." " I believe, Help thou my unbelief."
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