One life. On fire.

      The faint smell of smoke greets me as my alarm informs of the time. It smells like camping, like a pine-wood fire way up in the mountains. A fire that somebody didn’t quite put out last night.

      I leave the house and walk into a haze. The smell is stronger outside. After a very few minutes, the smoke convinces me that exercise needs to happen somewhere else today.

{Up to the greenhouse. Out to the road.}

There it is. A plume of smoke bubbles vertically into the sky. As though something of honor, it is christened with pink and gold of morning. 

I don’t really know what is happening over there, but I know. I don’t see the fire. I can’t see the fire. No one I know has seen it. But there is not the shadow of a doubt, it is there. 

This makes me think. 

          One life. on fire. Huge impact. 

That one fire can touch areas so far removed from itself, that you cannot even know what -whom- is burning. 

The smell is in the air. It effects the way we live. We can see the evidence. 

One life. On fire.

May that be you. and me. 

love.Me.more

{John 12:24-26, Matthew 20:28}

My English: {With help from Strong’s Concordance}

This is very true: A Seed of wheat must fall into the earth and give away its breath, its life, or else that Seed will remain alone. But, by yielding it’s existence, the seed is multiplied. 

(Self-sacrifice is really self-preservation. Self-serving is self-destruction. The seed that protects itself has no fruit at harvest time. Only in giving is there gain.)

If you are a friend to your own life, if you fondle over your breath, you will smother it. But if you love temporal life less, you will be preserved. You will guard, keep, and save your breath for the place, time, and purpose of eternal life. 

If you are My friend, come walk with Me on the road I travel. Accompany Me. Be My servant. Wherever I go, My servant will go and do there what I ask of them. If you are My friend, your breath, will be prized by My Father. He will hold it dear. He will honor it. It will be beloved by the One who gave it: the One who also calls you to love it less. 

In exactly the same way as I ask you to love your life less, I came. I was born with the face of a human on this earth- not to be accompanied or served, but to perform menial duties, to serve, and to give up My breath, which means freedom for you. 

That’s the way I am.

    I gave My life to the soil of humanity. Will you?

        I walked through life as a servant. Will you?

            I gave My breath for you. But will you give yours for Me?

Whatever the cost, whatever is lost, despise not My cross,

love.Me.more

Stream bed

The cooler temperatures of morning awaken my senses. I drink it in. The sky is exquisite. Light and dark, blending, shading, fading. The clouds are what really get me. So beautiful, but so soon never to be again.

Heaven's tapestry of blue and gold will fade. Soon the sky is the hue of day. Soon the clouds disappear.

Then it hits.

It's a gift about to be opened- poured out upon the earth. It's highest purpose is to bless the ones who thirst. From cloud to stream to lake and ocean, ever giving, ever given. Though the substance that quenches thirst, it changes the dry, thirsty places into streams of living water. Living because it's giving.

"No one can live the law of God without ministering to others." - DA 584. But we can only give another what Heaven gave us. We are merely the stream bed. He is the Water. He is the Giver.

Take it. Give it. Drink it. Live it.

Thank You Lord for pouring out Yourself upon the dryness of the earth. For making fountains where before was thirsting desert. For giving, and giving, and giving.

Thank You.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

An ever flowing fountain;
A well that's never dry;
Like rain upon a mountain,
Whose stream will never die;
The love of God is ceaseless,
It's end cannot be found.
It's Source has more than excess,
To quench the thirsty ground.

As palm trees shading Elim,
And rushes in its sand,
Our life may draw a pilgrim,
To Water near at hand.
For when a thirsting trav'ler
Sees life in desert waste,
It beckons to that wond'rer,
"Don't leave this place in haste."

For still the quenching river
Flows from the smitten Stone,
Salvation to deliver,
In depths of love unknown.
And those who taste it's value,
Not only will receive,
But take to give its virtue,
Another to relieve.

For the Love of Sacrifice

Too often, it is reduced to a cotton-candy fluffiness. Nothing to satisfy. Nothing worth the price to gain.

Yet, it’s most gripping revelation is in sacrifice.

Where there is no sacrifice, there is no love.

But where there is Love, can it be called sacrifice? For the one who loves, nothing is too much to give. The genuine stuff doesn’t shrink at the word “all”. Love delights in it. Beyond the point of pain, Love gives. And loves to do it. 

The soldier’s sacrifice? It’s as nothing. For the King has taken pain from the hands of death. The scaffold, the fire, the dungeon, the most inhumane atrocity cannot sever one soul from His love. 

But at the cross, mystery. Love cut off from Love. Sacrifice beyond measure. Beyond comprehension. 

He gave, yet said, I delight. 

I give, and call it sacrifice. 

Oh, for the love that shrinks at nothing… and gives because it is it’s greatest delight to do so. To know no sacrifice save His, because mine has faded into absolute nothingness in the light of the love of the cross. 

Oh, to love sacrifice, because I love His love. 

Backpacking, Experience, Expression

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life;” 1 John 1:1. 

The sun is warm. A gentle breeze plays catch with the leafy shrubs. Birds fill the air with melodious choruses and anthems. 

I sit atop my favorite perch so far, a gray, rounded rock. Across the lake, a thousand diamonds of light frolic as if in sheer happiness for the day. Sabbath. Backpacking. Delightful combination. 

My reading pauses indefinitely. That… which we have heard… 

John, that beloved apostle, who braved all kinds of things we can’t even relate to, had an experience with Jesus. An authentic experience with the Author of true experience. He had heard the voice of Jesus, had seen His face, had looked on it for untold hours, even touched the very Desire of the Ages. Can you imagine?

Christ ascends. John’s experience continues, deepens, broadens, until he can say -years after Christ has gone behind the curtain of space, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us.” 1 John 3:1. Because John did, he could say “Behold.” Why tell your friends to study a painting of which you have no knowledge? 

You can’t. 

That experience, is what I want. To know, not suspect, or surmise, or fancy, or imagine. To know and see with the soul, and not just the eyes. To look unto heaven and behold as if He were as close as my heart is to my eyes. That is what I crave for you.

But for John, it started with hearing. And in order for the beloved apostle to have heard, somebody had to tell him. 

A word, a look, a life as an expression of the God’s love, someone who did their duty as unto the Lord: somebody. told. John. 

The question burns in my mind: What am I telling John? Is it a testimony of Jesus, or temporary trifles? Do the words speak volumes of Life? Or death? Are we, like a pebble in a lake, dropping words which will reverberate in a blessing shared over and over and over? Do they bear the fruit of genuine experience in another? Another, who then goes a drops a pebble, in a lake? 

The appeal is to tell. Tell a tale of truth. Of Christ. Of Love. Of sacrifice. 

Tell it to be told again. 

GF Backpacking breakfast

Glow works as well in the woods...

Our lightened burdens ready to go home

Sacrifice Shines

      The early morning light awakens me. I turn to prayer. Time passes, but the natural golden glow of morning is missing. Something is strange. 

      Finger finds phone: 1:47. No wonder. I drop to my knees before the window which illuminates my room. What I find is obviously not the ruler of the day, but that of night. A halo of brilliant light, hemmed with pastels, encircles the glowing sphere, full and beautiful. I gaze in admiration for the Creator of it all. 

      All of a sudden, my eyes see something beyond the circle of light. Beams pierce through the dark of night in a veritable cross-roads of light. The giant reflector is not only surrounded by a circular glow, but in the center of a cross of light. The lines are distinct. I blink, but it’s still there. My gaze continues. 

Gentle voice: When you behold Me with your full face -just as the moon is full-, that is when I am reflected the best in your countenance. When you are on the cross, that is when your life shines the brightest of the cross.

“On the cross? ...we’re supposed to pick up our cross and follow You.”  We wouldn’t be on the cross then, right?

Again: Did you expect to take the cross and never die? What is the ultimate end of crucifixion?

Thoughts swirl. The darkness of death begets the brilliance of birth. The Prince of life took His cross to the place of death. A cross borne after Him has but one end. 

Quietly: Sacrifice shines. If you want to glow like the sun, stay in the center of the cross. 

A rhyme for the time: NEWSTART Health Summit

Good Nutrition, Exercise,

Water, Self-control;
These things make one strong and wise,
In body, mind, and soul.
Sunlight, Air, and peaceful Rest,
Trust in Heaven's care,
For our health this is the best-
Above, beyond compare.
Take these principles of health,
As your very own;
You will find them greater wealth,
Than anything you've known.
If you want it with your heart,
There is One who will impart,
You can have a brand NEWSTART,
But only this in Him!