Painting Pictures of Egypt

Painting pictures of Egypt— by Sara Groves

These lyrics are so weighty—I  get all hung up on them like a tar baby when I hear this song.  It is such a fantastic metaphor of psychological and spiritual inertia. How there is a strong gravity magnetizing us to old patterns, a self that is not evolving, a spirit that is not fed.

How we so keenly know where we are isn’t enough, isn’t where we need to end up.  But it peculiarly feels easier to stay where things don’t change...

I don’t want to leave here
I don’t want to stay
It feels like pinching to me either way
The places I long for the most
Are the places where I’ve been
They are calling after me like a long lost friend

It’s not about losing faith
It’s not about trust
It’s all about comfortable
When you move so much
The place I was wasn’t perfect
But I had found a way to live
It wasn’t milk or honey
But then neither is this
CHORUS:
I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacked
The future seems so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I"ve learned
And those roads closed off to me
While my back was turned

The past is so tangible
I know it by heart
Familiar things are never easy to discard
I was dying for some freedom
But now I hesitate to go
Caught between the promise
And the things I know
BRIDGE:
If it comes too quick
I may not recognize it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?
If it comes too quick
I may not appreciate it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?

Feudalism, Self Governing Part 2

The idea of self care, self governing, is making self well from the capital “N” Nutrients that fill us up authentically. As a collective human condition, we are all over the map from rigid to lavish as we approach self care.  The middle ground is fertile with “Nutrients” that grow pure parts of our nature and identity. We feel the most like ourselves, the most pure, when we swallow this fuel. 

Our “territory”—the plod over which we were given authority from the King Himself.  We have an essential charge over the goings-on in this territory He marked off for us.

It reminds me of the metaphor of our God who graciously gives us territory to tend, “talents” to invest, an inheritance to claim…as a Lord in medieval times entered a covenant with a vassal and bestowed a plot of land in exchange for homage and loyalty. 

Feudalism defined in medieval times the governing force over territory.  It was a relational and practical bond between a lord and a vassal.  So Christ claims the territory of our heart for Himself, He is Lord there. Lords in medieval times were covenanted to protect and oversee the big-picture well-being of their territory:

²⁵For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the 
Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

--2 Peter2:25

I will make peace your governor 
   and well-being your ruler. 
¹⁸ No longer will violence be heard in your land, 
   nor ruin or destruction within your borders, 
but you will call your walls Salvation 
   and your gates Praise.

--Isaiah 60:17B-18

 As vassals we are granted responsibility over our inner beings, our outer self, our relationships, and such.  This lends understanding—some of us “vassals” tend to our land intentionally, and there are crops and fruit and noticeable aromas of goodness to benefit from.  Though we have the same Lord as our neighbor vassal, our fiefs might look very different.

What a change-making understanding:  I am given “everything I need” for goodness in life as 2 Peter says, but I have to flex that muscle, or it goes unnoticed, un- invoked, unused.  “Everything I need” is not useful and withers when I don’t plug in and, with my head and heart on straight, flex those resources and utilize them.

2 Peter 1:3-4

³ His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴ Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

My prayer for myself and you:  God, let me tend to my heart and life the way you model for me to govern.  You are so much better to me than I am to myself.  You coax me: “ ¹⁵ Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” (Colossians 3).  Tune me in to adjust my governing and till this “land”, prepare it to harvest good things, blessings and abundance.

Self Governing

There is a continuum we are all somewhere on.  On one side, there is a militant, critical, rigid, over-ruled economy.  On the other end, we find a lack of boundaries, over lavish, over indulgent, “What’s one more?”, “Go for it—you deserve it!”

So curious is the power this mental environment has over wellbeing.

What needs to be keen to our senses is that Love and Care defined is found in the center of that bell curve with lavish on one end and rigid on the other.

So remarkable is the reflection of upbringing on this mental contour that we bend toward. Considering that time ago when you were new and youthful, does you internal climate reflect a similar slant that is familiar from your upbringing? Or maybe you have crafted a mental environment in reaction to an approach in your childhood that you want to move away from—the antithesis?

Lord, help me to govern myself with balance: grace and order.  Wake me up and help me to smell the fragrance that is sweet when I tune in and hold to center.  There are things I know I need to do to be well.  There is a set of action items specific to my well being. Why do I scoot through my day without plugging into them? And then do it again the next day? Picking my head up, I scan the backdrop I am operating from , and I regret things undone, or done.

What I need is a square peg for my square whole—an analogy I think of often. What will really satisfy?  What will truly salve?  What elixir fits these symptoms that empty me?

“I don’t do what I should do”  “I do what I don’t want to do”

–Romans 7

Instead, how often I find round things and senselessly roll them around, trying to fit that square.  Bearing no goodness, no fruit at all.  The round becomes a red herring—distracting me from what would ultimately undo my boundness, my stuckness, fill my empty places.

When I call my own bluff, peel off my blinders, I accept what life requires of me to be well. 

I resist self contempt and apply healthy pressure to my tendencies that go untamed, mismanaged. 

Then, I feel traction in my life—like I have found a toehold and pushed upward my being a notch further away from shallow breathing and sour complacency.  I have memorized the landscape from the vantage point of that complacency—I know it’s contours well and there is no awe and no transformation.

There is new positioning acquired from governing intentionally, holding to center, and an ability to balance now that that square whole is properly filled in. When governed differently, the terrain takes a whole different shape.

Thank you, Lord, that it is your zeal.  You, the God of the Angel Armies,  that powers that upward notch. When your authority grows, wholeness is found.  Thank you for  Grace that provides “firm footing” and “right living” and wellbeing.

Isaiah 9 (The Message)

His names will be: Amazing Counselor, 
   Strong God,
Eternal Father, 
   Prince of Wholeness.
His ruling authority will grow, 
   and there'll be no limits to the wholeness he brings.
He'll rule from the historic David throne 
   over that promised kingdom.
He'll put that kingdom on a firm footing 
   and keep it going
With fair dealing and right living, 
   beginning now and lasting always.
The zeal of God-of-the-Angel-Armies 

Habit of Expectancy

There is a bareness and a clarity that is inherent in this newness of year.

A bit more order and routine emerges from the bedlam.

And we are left with room.

And a bit of weight.  The weight of the things I know my heart needs to change. And I bear the fear that it might not change. Again.

As I take in this devotional, Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) makes me think. After she mentions how we wear our routine behaviors, I keep thinking.  Like a nun wears her "habit" so we wear our customs, our rhythms, our patterns.

We dress ourselves.  We trend toward an appearance

We express ourselves and are experienced by others by those behaviors we create a trend from.  Not so much the outliers.  The habits.

So, little by little the adage comes true..."we will soon be what we are now becoming"...

I have to keep my heart wired in straight around this or I move toward doom and gloom and panic. “I have got to change this! Repattern that! Determine to do it differently.”  That is my auto pilot.

So I stumble into the Word, not knowing what I am looking for.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace (not gloom and doom and panic) as you trust in him (not me), so that you may overflow with hope (not naysay the possibility of change) by the power of the Holy Spirit. (not my power…)" (Romans 15:13 NIV)

Sigh...

It isn't sourced from me.  It does not depend on what my trend was or what habit I wore last year. It is not built up or town down according to how many days, admittedly, weeks I spent magnetized to tasks and performance and the outside world. It does not wain from the mornings not spent still and dialed in.

Then I exhale with relief as this next Scripture sinks in: 

"That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting (made roomy for the Lord). We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy (not gloom and panic). Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting (when we want to give up hoping for change), God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans". (Romans 8:24-26 MSG)

I wait in need of change, grace floods. It fills in all these places enlarged. I wasn't given a map of all the Lord wants to birth in me this year...."We don’t know what enlarges us"...what specific change we should push to birth. But Grace floods in all those places enlarged by pregnancy, no room for gloom and panic. 

When pregnant, we don’t know the detailed features, temperament, we haven’t yet even met face-to-face our baby.  So we don’t know the details and features of what God has us expectant with. We do know, though, that it is good. 

Like when pregnant, we take care of ourselves…intake nutrients, avoid toxins, ready the environment….

We cannot produce a baby by sheer will.  We cannot by choosing so, make that baby grow healthy. We cannot predict the circumstances of the birth. 

But we can take in the nutrients, avoid the toxins, prepare our environment—that is work we can do, what we can control, to put ourselves in the way of what God wants to restore and birth in us.

And it is good. It is joyful, restful, sweet. To put ourselves in the way of Him and wait, filled in with Grace, for what is in store.

So I want to wear a habit of relief.  Instead of being “diminished” from waiting for change, I want to be filled in with Joy and Ease. I want that trend. I want to wrap it around me like a cape, visible and expressed and experienced outside and in.

You are loved, 

Highway 2012

As I start to recalibrate for a new year, I am so thankful for the fresh start. 

God, in the journey this year will be thank you for the description of Your Way as a highway.  It is open and nourishing, progressing toward spirit and depth that are the only things that will make me “me” in the face of troubles and trials.  Thank you that it is not a way that holds worry, confusion, wrong turns, mistakes.

I don’t have to make every step correctly.

I don’t have to turn left or right or make sense out of directions. 

Despite “external evidence” in the landscape of my surroundings, it is a path that is safe. Untouchable from things that would decay.  

I see a picture in my mind's eye of an aquarium, where there is a moving sidewalk under a tunnel of clear glass, a strong bubble protecting me from the sharks and harm on the other side. I am free to observe and move past without fear of injury. I see them, and I know they desire to harm me, but I am untouched.  

Fill in the blank for yourself: What do you experience as threatening and circling above…marital dissatisfaction, a career performance, disappointment or failure, dissatisfaction with your physical body, mistakes in conduct, a struggling loved one, anxiety, a persistent hurt in your heart or body. 

They are frightening to look at.  

Should you be vulnerable to them you would most likely be torn apart. 

But, according to the promise below in Isaiah 35—we are not. 

The path we have the blessing to move down this New Year is a way to move and evolve in goodness and thriving. 

Like the moving sidewalk through the shark encounter, we need only to be still and know. It certainly takes intention and practice to stay there, but how comforting: We don’t even have to lift our legs to walk down the path. God sends us forth with his energy.

^{Colossians 1:29}

^”For this I labor, striving with all the superhuman energy which He so mightily enkindles and works within me.”

Isaiah 30:15:  

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…”

Lord, as the year begins help me fine tune my practice of being still and true.   Let me “sing as I make my way home, an unfading halo of joy encircling my head, welcomed home with gifts of joy and gladness as all sorrows and sighs scurry into the night”. (Isaiah 35

Isaiah 35—the Message:

3-4Energize the limp hands, 

   strengthen the rubbery knees.

Tell fearful souls, 

   "Courage! Take heart!

God is here, right here, 

   on his way to put things right

And redress all wrongs. 

   He's on his way! He'll save you!"

 5-7Blind eyes will be opened, 

   deaf ears unstopped,

Lame men and women will leap like deer, 

   the voiceless break into song.

Springs of water will burst out in the wilderness, 

   streams flow in the desert.

Hot sands will become a cool oasis, 

   thirsty ground a splashing fountain.

Even lowly jackals will have water to drink, 

   and barren grasslands flourish richly.

 8-10There will be a highway 

   called the Holy Road.

No one rude or rebellious 

   is permitted on this road.

It's for God's people exclusively— 

   impossible to get lost on this road. 

   Not even fools can get lost on it.

No lions on this road, 

   no dangerous wild animals—

Nothing and no one dangerous or threatening. 

   Only the redeemed will walk on it.

The people God has ransomed 

   will come back on this road.

They'll sing as they make their way home to Zion, 

   unfading halos of joy encircling their heads,

Welcomed home with gifts of joy and gladness 

   as all sorrows and sighs scurry into the night.

.

Christmas from the Inside Out

I have been thinking how similarly we veil our true selves throughout the year like we also sometimes find the message Christmas veiled to us. The twinkle of the lights and bows of Christmas can distract us from the unwrapping and unbinding of our hearts that God would have for us at this time of year. 

You may have heard one of my favorite descriptions God gives us for our inner world, our true self. He uses the most lavish language he has access to in our English language. I will include a verse before because I love how it speaks of God’s promises:

Isaiah 54

¹⁰ “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake,
But My loving kindness will not be removed from you,
And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,”
Says the LORD who has compassion on you. 

 ¹¹ “O afflicted one (fill your name here), storm-tossed, and not comforted,
Behold, I will set your stones in antimony,
And your foundations I will lay in sapphires. 

¹² “Moreover, I will make your battlements of rubies,
And your gates of crystal,
And your entire wall of precious stones. 

Informed and influenced by Teresa Avila’s “Interior Castle”, in my mind’s eye I see the structure of our inner worlds like the walls and floors and surroundings of an inner room. How grateful I am for the Lords steadfast estimation of me: In His eyes, dripping with lavish beauty. Even when I am messy as can be on the outside, my attention drawn to lesser things. 

Hoping you feel unseen abundance this holiday season, and an authentic sense that Christ has come to restore, reclaim, and re-establish you in true goodness.