quote

thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.   mark twain (1835 - 1910) 

beloved

place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. song of solomon 8:6

like dust blown away...

i'm sitting here on my bed just thinking, and searching the internet. my little black lamp is on. i just want to write and write and write. sometimes what i'm thinking about is a caged animal. i can only think about it and let it out when i have the time. one of the things i just keep thinking about is forgiveness. i randomly image searched forgiveness... it's the most beautiful thing ever. i think someone rightly said we are most like God, most divine when we forgive. it really is an almost incomprehensible supernatural subject.. that God forgives... us.. and that we can even somehow forgive. i clipped a couple images that make me think about what it is that i just really want to get out in this i guess... not that i understand. 

i challenge you to just look really hard at these pictures and see beyond them. read each picture before my silly words. these are just my thoughts~

#1 well the first, i am just struck by the seaming effortlessness.. when to forgive, for me, is oh so hard, but for God~ how light and airy what is forgiven floats away.. to nothingness, how He removes our sin as far as the east is from the west and remembers no more. also, this picture makes me think of how on our part, when we forgive, it is letting go of what you really cannot hold on to in the first place.

#2 all the medicine you need.. wow, is this true... i think of how the Bible says once for all He died for our sins. once! that is the most incredible cure-all. all that we have ever done and ever will do covered. when i look again, i think how we in this world take so many drugs, so many medicines... heart medicines, depression medicines.. we are crazy on pills. have a problem, simply pop a pill, maybe that will fix it. maybe we need to forgive. would forgiveness of others make us live longer and eradicate medical conditions? i don't know, but it will cure our heart of hatred and bitterness and hurt.

#3 i just get lost in this picture for a multitude of reasons. it really is so beautiful and i want to go there, moreover i feel like its meaning is staggering. the bridge of forgiveness. we go out on a limb when we forgive, we literally build something hard, and dangerous for us.. our effort for resolution could not reach a receptive shore, they might not be even sorry. moreover, if it is true forgiveness, we have to leave the bridge up and allow ourselves the possibility of being hurt again by that person we forgave. my mind is also drawn toward one other beautiful bridge... the cross. stretched across a chasm of eternal punishment, Christ laid down his life on a cross that we might be forgiven.

#4 forgiveness is choosing to not remember the ugly. even when it was real. when i look at this picture i think of a beautiful artwork of hearts~ created from the barbwire from a concentration camp. it's almost disturbing what and the lengths to which Forgiveness forgives... it chooses to bloody it's fingers, slowly bending the sharp painful barbs of wire that were once used to torture it into a piece of love.

#5 i think of humility. the words make a story unfold before me of a bitter husband raking his elderly wife over the coals for a simple mistake and how she simply and beautifully said... "i'm sorry dear, i'm still learning." still learning, ..being willing to learn when more than half of your life is over. this astounds me. how often i have come into God's presence and cried out "forgive me father, i'm just a child!" why do we not give others the grace that God gives us. humility is intertwined with forgiveness... you must be humble to ask for it, and able to be humble to give it to another.

#6 myself as a child at a chalkboard with a whine.... "how many times do i have to?" then the scene shifts as i stand before the chalkboard of life, where i must perform: this time with a far more insurmountable problem: forgive~ how many times do i have to? hmm.. i look at this picture once more.. i think of one more thing. my sins, oh my sins. they are many like chalk dust~... blown far away.

I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. isaiah 44:22

vendo-land

so God is no way a genie in a bottle or a slot machine we can just put our good deeds or prayers into an receive a reward... but sometimes, he works like vending machines. yesterday i was very hungry...starving even (more accurately malnourished on solely peanut butter sandwiches and noodles.. and payday is a long way coming) and stopped by the vending machines at school between classes. i had three dollar bills in my wallet. {uh oh.} i usually try to keep those un-spent in case i run into trouble, needed to pay a tip, cab, public phone, bad guy, ect. but i was just too tempted and vendo-land seemed strangely beautiful, (not to mention has an ice cream vending machine with a mechanical arm as well, but that's another story). i determined beforehand i would make good choices, so i bit my lip, and stepped up to the third machine on the right. yes, there, $2.75 was a chicken sandwich in a wrapper. shunning all other candy, delectable treats, and caffeine-induced energy; i put in my last three dollars. i needed this, i can't remember the last time i had protein.  i consciously thought, i'm embarrassed to admit, what was i going to do in case of an emergency or next time i don't have food at the apartment? the machine whirred and then dropped my sandwich down into the drawer. i thought about pushing the coin return button.. after all, it's my quarter, thank you very much! i didn't though, that's what i would have usually done. i just bent down got my sandwich out of the door. *clink, clink, clink... coins were dropping into the coin return. *clink, clink, clink, clink.. okay, i think that was more than the sound one quarter makes. i hear coins keep dropping. almost afraid, i just kind of stand there. did i break the machine? (quick look around) did i just hit the jackpot? no, i tell myself, it probably is just malfunctioning and giving me my change back in dimes and nickles (which it does deposit change in at times). it keeps dropping coins. *clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink..faster.. at this point, i don't open the little metal coin door because i don't want it to stop. *clink, clink... finally, complete silence. i open the door and not only all the money i paid for my sandwich was there but also a TON more change! not just any change, but QUARTERS! i couldn't believe it.

God provided for me. a wave of thoughts flooded my head. i thought of joseph~ returning all of his brothers money back with them in their bags of grain, of the children of israel picking up mana every day, i thought of the parable of the lost coin~how precious it was to her. He cared about me. my little~ He made much of. He gave me my daily bread.

He ASTOUNDS us with his goodness... and then! ...and then, how quickly we forget..

my memory apparently wasn't functioning well, at all. the next day, {today} i am drawn to vendo-land again. i think i'm thinking i'm going to "rub the bottle again and the genie will come out"...so to speak, create the same stimuli and get the desired response. {in case you're not getting it, let me spell that out for you: g r e e d.} something catches my eye, first machine on the left. a lemon vitamin water was stuck inside sideways up against the glass, apparently a machine error. i banged on the glass, it budged enough to fall leaning on a blue propel/gatorade or something. here's my chance another free thing! i shake the door, no luck, and then put in my money and hit C08 ~ the blue propel, thinking that will push the lemon vitamin water down as well, thus getting two drinks with my money! no such magic... no propel, no lemon vitamin water, no refund. arrg. this is annoying. it ate MY MONEY! i was mad. where's the customer service number for this stupid machine. i kinda tapped my foot even and sighed loud. urg. and my money too!, my money... do you know how poor i am, i could have used that!? i turned the phrase over in my head.... no, something wasn't sounding right... oh. oh yeah...my money?... wasn't this the same money that God gave me yesterday? the same quarters? i mentally slap myself. i'm so stupid. so ungrateful. why do i worry? its up to God anyway.

i just felt. i don't know, overwhelming [[trust]]. right then.

and not just about the providing me vending machine items, just in regards to a lot on my mind.... i turn around to leave. a man with olive green coveralls comes around corner. "hey, your machine got stuck? here, have some change."

...no joke. wow.................... God.

these are my vice verses..