Whispers of Truth

In my reading this week, I came across a sentence in a prayer that has resonated with me and won’t leave me alone. The image has rubbed itself into my mind and etched a place in my heart. My gratitude overflows and my mind keeps tracing it. Here it is, this sentence in the midst of an entire prayer about shortcomings, a prayer about living in the wilderness, about discouragement and yet the hope that lies even there in Christ: “ Death dismays me, but my great high priest stands in its waters and will open me a passage, and beyond is a better country ” (“Shortcomings” from The Valley of Vision , p. 85).  My fixation isn’t really on the part about death so much as Christ standing in its waters opening me a passage to a better country beyond. I had just gotten to Hebrews in my daily reading when I read this and decided to read the whole book in one sitting instead of slowly perusing it and chewing on it as I normally would digest it. Having read it often, I knew that I would see a pictu

As a farmer, my husband relied heavily on irrigation for the crops he was responsible for growing in the warm heat of the Deep South. The pipes would be laid across a large field that needed irrigating and would connect eventually with the source of water. The pump would then pull the water from the source and deliver the water to the field where the irrigation system would spread the water to the thirsty plants. Now, mind you, my explanation of how this works is simplistic, so here’s my disclaimer: I am only the wife of a man who understands the concept and applied it often, waking me up at all hours of the night to go turn it on or off before technology caught up with the need of farmers (and their tired wives) to sleep and do other things beyond irrigating crops . . . Anyway.  I thought of all this today as I read a prayer from The Valley of Vision called “Self-Knowledge” that begins with “Searcher of hearts, it is a good day to me when thou givest me a glimpse of myself” (p. 6

What Patterns Are Patterns are often the thing most needed and the thing most despised when someone is learning to sew. Honestly, when making a quilt, I love the freedom FROM patterns because they have always frustrated me seriously. Trying to figure out how to cut them accurately, how to interpret the directions that seem to be written in an undecipherable language, how to make them work for me as intended. Using a pattern isn’t easy to a novice, which I am. (Believe me, I don’t speak as a professional.) In truth, I have a pattern that has been lying on my sewing table  for two years now  (as well as the requisite fabric to make the pattern with already washed and ironed and waiting for me). I hate interpreting how-tos that badly. I want to, but my want-to is broken when it comes to actually making the thing I bought the pattern for. If reading the Bible for a new believer or someone who is not yet in Christ is anything like interpreting a pattern for one unfamiliar with them, I can