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| Evening Prayer: karin leonard |
I saw this while messing around looking up peace.. The title of this post in Hebrew. It would be a photo I'd have taken given the chance walking along the shore. The painting isn't s well known as the one I posted earlier this week and spoke about in that post. It is a strange place to be talking about peace right now.. when everything says I should be angry, when the world would say you should be angry. This painting for me is peace, is my idea of peace.
I put on my Facebook status yesterday that I was amused by a situation that I found myself in. It should have hurt, been like putting salt on a wound or pressing a bruise to have continued to feed into how I was doing. But to use amuse surly not not just a few days after being found in the darkest of shadows. A friend noted they were not amused but livid at what had happened. I wrote amused having spent time listening - listening to what God was saying to me, I was on retreat, not a retreat in a normal sense and not something I do very often.. space, conversation, questions (Hard questions at times),friends, food and prayer and love.
The timing wasn't the most easy for any of us to be going through this ( work and family for my friends) and for me to be doing a hedgehog impression.
I'm not saying that it has just gone away it's still a hard place to be in. To be writing about peace feels as I started the post as being very wrong. This though is the reality of the place that I find myself in.
The words of Bill Johnson tonight rang so true and resonate with what I was being asked to refocus on while away he writes
"You can only hold on to one thing at a time - the promise of God or disappointment. You'll have to drop one to embrace the other."To live in this goes against the very nature of man against self, we want to live in the disappointment and hurt.to justify the how we are feeling and almost keep ourselves in the position of being disappointed or hurt. We have been promised life by God... not just any type of life but life in all fullness..
Coming back from the retreat carrying this peace that the promises of God are still strong, that the family that He has given are there to cary and support. The hedgehog isn't unfurled yet there is a though unlike this time last week a pin prick of light at the end of the tunnel. The peace I have I can not begin to explain to truly describe to you it can't be Earned, or brought it is freely given . I know where this peace comes from
"You can only hold on to one thing at a time - the promise of God or disappointment. You'll have to drop one to embrace the other."
ReplyDeleteBut it's also good to know that God isn't going to drop us, even during times when we may feel like we're embracing disappointment.
Yeah, I did a meditation on sunday morning after the sermon as a response it wasn't planned and not something I would normally like or do but felt led to do it.
ReplyDeleteI asked the congregation to hold out their hand, and to place in them a worry or disappointment that they have that they would like to hand over to jesus. then to lift there hands as a sign of offering it up to God. then to see jesus there one hand holding them the other supporting their hands taking the weight of the burden they were giving over...