Whatever He Says

I shared a blog post yesterday, titled, "The Day of Silence." After I posted it, I felt uneasy. I had veered from the purpose I felt in the dream when I had it, and gone down a bunny trail, feeling that the original thoughts seemed too sombre. I want to correct that, so I'm posting it again, hoping that you'll read again. Stay with me on my writing journey of obedience, friends, I appreciate your partnership in reading so much. Belinda The dream stayed with me all day. It came in the moments before I woke up, right after a dream about forgetting pages with words to songs for our worship team (one of those dreams you get over and over when you have low-level anxiety about something.)  The one I am writing about here was different, though, and the feeling of it lingered, In it, the world was utterly silent. Last weekend we woke up on Sunday morning to a planned hydro shut down for routine maintenance that I'd forgotten about. We had no hot water, no light, NO COF...

Luke 21:34 (New International Version) 34"Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. "Dissipation, drunkenness and...the anxieties of life." As I read that verse in yesterday's Daily Light, I realized that although "the anxieties of life" may seem like the odd one out in the list, in fact, all three things distract from God. Dissipation--according to the on-line dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ it is: 1. The act of dissipating or the condition of having been dissipated. 2. Wasteful expenditure or consumption. 3. Dissolute indulgence in sensual pleasure; intemperance. 4. An amusement; a diversion. That one is pretty self expanatory. Drunkenness can result through blotting out pain, insecurity or discomfort, through the numbing effect of alcohol. By the grace of God I don't struggle with drunkenness, but I misuse other things...

Deuteronomy 1:44 (New Living Translation) 44 But the Amorites who lived there came out against you like a swarm of bees. They chased and battered you all the way from Seir to Hormah. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses starts out by saying that a journey that should have taken only 11 days, had taken forty years because of fear and rebellion against God. The Israelites had been chronic complainers--and even looked back longingly to their days of slavery. And when they finally did arrive on the edges of the Promised Land, they could only see barriers and obstacles--the giants in the land. The Israelites might make me shake my head, but if I pause and think for a few moments, I can relate some of these flaws to my own battles--and as I said a couple of days ago--I have wandered in some personal deserts for 40 years too. Moses goes on to record the foolishness of the Israelites, who, suddenly resolving to enter the land, did so full of rash courage and arrogance--and without God. The people...