Today & Yesterday

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

Oswald suggests today that God is calling us continually higher.  In much the same way that the Devil also tempts us by offering that which is above us through conniving strategic measures that threaten us with the lure of the easy road, God also "elevates us by grace to heavenly places."  Rather than peaks that jut out into the sky, God's higher ground is safe, secure and more open than we could have imagined from below.

For me, it's hard to even remember back to a year ago.  I remember death, heartache, a business beginning, a tumultuous tempest that seemed to have me trapped in stress and blockaded by problems that I couldn't solve on my own or even hope to conquer by focusing my attention elsewhere. So, what has happened in a year?  More death, a little less heartache, a business that did actually grow or at least suck in some of my money and spit a little bit back out.  I am free from the tempest but not free from the scars or myself which is of course fated to find me trouble  no matter where my feet tread.

I may be a bad gauge of growth but I don't pretend to imagine that the ground I'm on is tremendously higher than that of a year ago.  I think Oswald's advice is the key to see that change though: "Never let God give you one point of truth which you do not instantly live up to."


There is one truth I know.  "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." While eventually my pursuits will end, right now the starting of pursuits seems infinite.  I pray that each thing I decide to engage in will be a response to a point of truth.  


Martin Luther said, "God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars."  Sometimes I think we look to the Bible without seeing where its at.  It exists in a world being carved into by humanity.  St. Augustine suggested that the greatest book was the very appearance of created things.  "Read it." He says. We spend most of our days in buildings and constructs of man that block out the very world God has painted into being.  


Winter has been long.  I'm ready to spend some time with God in his creation, reading what has been written long before the word's of the Bible where gathered onto one page.