Firstfruits

 

I am reminded once again, “Be faithful, believing that this moment, this task of being the keeper of this home and tender of these hearts is my calling and is my  form (a form, not solely) of temporary worship.”  Am I choosing to magnify Him in the moment?  Am I choosing to center myself on this task/ministry/calling and see it as opportunity for me to display  my faithful heart or am I treating this task as a distraction? Am I giving Him and my charges the “firstfruits” or are they getting the stale, dry, sparse, bruised and battered leftovers of my devotion?

“We don’t like thoughtless love, food, passion or friendship…we like true love, wholesome food, pure passion and friendship that puts the other first…

What does our Lord and Master want from us…nothing less….”

Wow. I love (hate!) the visual image of “leftovers”. I do NOT want to offer leftovers to God. Despite my not wanting to, I wonder how often I do and am shamed and sorrowed to say that it is often. The wording in Sarah’s “Leftovers” post just made me feel like scales dropped from my eyes. I will be thinking and evaluating the plate of praise that I serve Him today, in my relationship with Him, and with those He has placed in my path to love and serve… that it won’t be cluttered by take out and leftovers, but that it will be a double portion, hand mixed and served up with the firstfruits of all my devotion.

And So I Write...

“Writing can be a true spiritual discipline.

Writing can help us to concentrate,

to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts,

to clarify our minds,

to process confusing emotions,

to reflect on our experiences,

to give artistic expression to what we are living,

and to store significant events in our memories.

Writing can also be good for others

who might read what we write.

Quite often a difficult,

painful,

or frustrating day

can be redeemed by writing about it.

By writing we can claim what we have lived

and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys.

Then writing can become lifesaving for us

and sometimes for others too.”

I love writing for the reasons mentioned so eloquently by Nouwen above.

"Writing is not just jotting down ideas.

Often we say: "I don't know what to write.

I have no thoughts worth writing down."

But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself.

As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper

and start to express in words what is on our minds

or in our hearts,

new ideas emerge,

ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there.

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing

is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures

that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.”

Some time ago, Sarah dropped by and left me a treasure of a gift in the comment box. It was a quote of something I had written in response to a post of hers back in 2008. The beauty of the gift was that as I read the words, they spoke to me. I had penned them, but they were offered back to me and not recognizing them as my own, they moved me deeply. This is one of the things that I most love about writing, that as I sit and sort through my thoughts and seek to connect things and express them, something beautiful emerges that is not so much the production of a girl with a knack for words as it is the product of a work being written in my life by the Master Scribe. It never ceases to stir me. And so I write, and am continually enriched in the process.

Hello Mayberry

Life is funny.  I’ve been a lot of places, met a lot of amazing people, seen a lot of really cool stuff, had a chance to be part of some brilliant work places.  Now here I am, livin’ the simple, quiet life (figuratively speaking of course as most of the time it’s anything but quiet around here). 

Our home in Italy was reminiscent of any Tuscan villa you would see in any movie with a Florentine setting, with sweeping vistas of sunflower fields, olive groves and vineyards falling and rising in all directions.  Yet these fields that surround me here have just as much intrigue and beauty as any Tuscan landscape.  And so much more.

Whenever people hear about where we’ve come from, and where we live now, they inevitably gasp and ask, “What brought you HERE?”  And I just smile, and get all sentimental inside, and a favorite song starts drumming away in my head.

I don’t have to “miss” Mayberry.  Cause I live there.  And I literally live on that old dirt road that isn’t listed on the map.  *grin*.  And I’m lovin’ it.

Mayberry - Rascal Flatts

“Sometimes it feels like this world is spinning faster
Than it did in the old days 
So naturally, we have more natural disasters 
From the strain of a fast pace

Sunday was a day of rest
Now, it’s one more day for progress
And we can’t slow down ‘cause more is best
It’s all an endless process

I miss Mayberry
Sitting on the porch drinking ice-cold cherry Coke
Where everything is black & white                       

Picking on a six string
Where people pass by & you call them by their first name
Watching the clouds roll by
Bye, bye

Sometimes I can hear this old earth shouting
Through the trees as the wind blows
That’s when I climb up here on this mountain
To look through God’s window
Now I can’t fly
But I got two feet that get me high up here
Above the noise and city streets
My worries disappear

I miss Mayberry
Sitting on the porch drinking ice-cold cherry Coke
Where everything is black & white                       

Picking on a six string
Where people pass by & you call them by their first name
Watching the clouds roll by
Bye, bye

Sometimes I dream I’m driving down an old dirt road
Not even listed on a map
I pass a dad and son carrying a fishing pole
But I always wake up every time I try to turn back

I miss Mayberry
Sitting on the porch drinking ice-cold cherry Coke
Where everything is black & white                       

Picking on a six string
Where people pass by & you call them by their first name
Watching the clouds roll by

Bye, bye.

Or in our case.  “Hello.”

Secrets of Successful Living

I’m purging my bookshelves.  This is not something that comes easy to me, but hey, life is tough.  I’ve accumulated a small pile of books that I don’t feel need take up valuable space on my limited shelves and have leafed through them and am packing them in a box for my next stop at Value Village.  One of these particular books held my attention a bit longer than the others, probably because it ties in with a lot of the things I have been focusing on in recent months.  Although I found it rather off the wall in parts, and this post is not meant to be an endorsement in any way, shape or form, I thought it might be beneficial to jot down a few of the thoughts that did impress themselves upon me. 

Wholeness is health, unity, sufficiency, and the peace that comes from having enough of everything you need in your life. 

Balance is having the various parts of your life in proper proportion to each other.  The two terms are vitally interrelated.  Success, by definition of this book, is “balanced wholeness.”

The book visualizes the circle of our life as an eight sectioned wheel divided into the following categories in no particular order;

Recreational, Mental, Community, Professional, Material, Financial, Family and Physical with SPIRITUAL as the core of the circle, all other categories branching out from the core on the premise that;

“One is not a human being having spiritual experiences.  One is a spiritual being have human experiences.” 

The book is a “planner”  and states;

“If you simply take life as it comes and never seek to conform your will to God’s will or your ways to His ways, your life will meander without a strong sense of direction, purpose or fulfillment.”

“The Lord isn’t at all against our making plans.  He’s against our worshiping our plans.  And He’s against our making plans that leave Him out.  To be more precise, we must ask the Lord to give us our plans…

We ask and believe that God will reveal His desires to us and plant His dreams in us.  We then make our goals based on the desires and dreams.  We forge the goals into a plan, and we begin to work on the plan and along the way, we continually ask the Lord, “Am I on the right track?  Am I pursuing this as quickly as You want it pursued?  Am I becoming the person You want me to be?” 

It beckons a person to dream. 

“Dreams invite you to see a future that is better than the present.  Dreams compel you to grow and to develop yourself in ways you haven’t thus far.  Dreams give you energy and enthusiasm.”

I love that.  I’m a dreamer, a reacher, a planner, an achiever.  And maybe, just maybe… God made me that way.  May I be all, in a wholesome and balanced way, for His glory. 

 

random notes taken while leafing through “Nine Empowering Secrets of Successful Living” by Denis Waitley.