Monday, August 27, 2012

Dark Visions

Beautiful scenes. 
That's what my spirit's eye had seen up to the time when July rolled into August back in 2005.  But reality is:  not everything is beautiful.

August 1, 2005
We went camping for the first time this summer and Saturday night around midnight, I had a very strong feeling of disquiet--anguish, but detached from anything, free-floating.That's when the vision began.
I wonder now if I saw Lucifer approaching. In any case, this entity looked like an intricate crystal at his core, only covered in crystal spikes, like a gumball fallen from a tree, except the crystal was not round.  More like two pyramids stacked base to base.  A brownness--like dead-leaf paste--covered this core.  Still, I could tell that once--when it had been clear--light did surely flow through it making an incredible prismatic effect.  Shooting rainbows for miles in every direction.  From either side of this core, two huge arcs extended--like wings, like broken glass balls, only so broken that they simply looked like steel cord.  Whether there had once been more to them or not, I couldn't say, but I had the feeling they'd been spheres, swirling the rainbow colors, diffusing light. 

I asked God to allow me to see this creature's former state, to confirm or correct my assumptions, but He said no.  "You would long for the return of that former state for him.  You would feel compassion over the ugliness, the lonely hulk that remains; and now is not the time to feel compassion for him."

I know as I saw him float in a sea of utter black sky (no stars) I sensed coldness. Loneliness.  Insanely deep loneliness.  And there was massive power--so much power that I understood how people could wonder if this might actually be God instead, for the power overwhelmed any perception of good or bad.  Were it not for the underlying lack of joy, and for the "decay" that wrapped his core I myself might not have been sure how to receive what I saw.  I considered him.  Such coldness.  Such a fight to deny the self-awareness of lost beauty.  Reaching out to tempt Christ, to "gain" Him by offering the only substitute he has to offer for intimacy:  power.  His display of power was indeed terrible and awesome.  It has become his only solace, though small solace it is.  Underneath, unfortunately, he is brilliant.  Too brilliant not to know that power can only ever be a second best.  Yet he can't release pride and mistrust, and so power becomes the nearest he knows to an intimate companion.

Then, the vision changed.  I saw a large circle of people, holding hands and murmuring prayers.  Maybe 40-50 of them?  Not sure.  And there was a gap in the circle.  I felt the question given to me, "Would you join us?"  So I stepped into the circle and joined hands with them and began to pray.  I felt a surge of power here, too, a wind in the circle, but it was not enough...not at all enough.  Not against what was coming in that black sky.  Against such an adversary, there was need for something so much stronger. 

This particular vision lingered as a heaviness, even as the lightness of the vision of the bride had stayed with me.  I began to wonder whether I really wanted a life of visions, after all.  I did discover that the name Lucifer translates "Day Star" and so I wondered again if I really had seen the dead version of that name's earlier, implied glory. 

Other dreams followed that added to the story of this strange apparition.
Years if them.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

A Joy in the Hand Is Worth...

Cupped hands of alabaster stone, cupped as if they held water, but instead they hold a votive candle, and light glows throughout and billows from the palms.  My friend has this little statue near the entryway to her kitchen.  The first time I saw it, I caught my breath.  I knew an ancient vision (on my timeline anyway) was soon to come true.  But how does one gain a light-scarred hand?  And how does one turn such a thing into an offering, pools of light to a dark soul even as pools of water are given to a thirsty one?

Ann VosKamp crooked a finger.   Helped me see a direction to explore:

Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand.  In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy.  The moment the hand is clenched tight, fingers all pointing toward self and rights and demands, joy is snuffed out.  Anger is the lid that suffocates joy until she lies limp and lifeless.  And for me, it's a cosmic-numbing notion that far eclipses this domestic moment.  It speaks to the whole of my life and the vision brands me: The demanding of my own will is the singular force that smothers out joy--nothing else. --1000 Gifts
        

What do I want from this life?  What do I think I deserve?  Ann quotes Henry Ward Beecher to say, "A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves."  And this is simple, but it can stretch to a strain easily.  When the view expands to include shadows of things dancing beyond the grace of this life, beyond the grave of this life.  When the view says "only in death shall you truly possess me, if you can leave me alone until then and only observe and consider and anticipate, like a betrothed."  Then pride and joy and faith endure a different sort of smelting. 

"God does not give rights but imparts responsibilities
--response-abilities-- 
inviting us to respond to His love-gifts." 
So Ann says. 

That branding light in the hand was spoken over me.  So I dreamed the cross as a dance.  I dream the resurrection as an offering.
I choose to respond in this life according to the shadows dancing there--beyond the grave--though they resonate down into this life with a clutch-me-now winsomeness.
Because I really do believe all this.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Stigmata

The light. 
I let it pierce my hand this morning.
It was my choice.  I could have refused the dance, but no.
I let it pierce my hand, and this is what I listened to as it happened...

Friday, August 24, 2012

Crossroads

Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe [which is] instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man [that is] an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure [things] new and old. Matthew 13:52

Things old and new.
The old thing--a dream of a dance.  I danced with Christ, and as we danced--formally, something like a waltz--light pierced the scar on his hand, penetrated it.  Then, like a laser, pierced my own as it was clasped in his and the light continued beyond us.  Locked us together.
The new thing--the redundant image of being at a crossroads.  A place of deciding on a course to take.  Changes of direction both obvious and with long-range implications.

Both have come to me repeatedly the last few months--starting almost simultaneously.  Like a tide coming into shore.  Waves of reminders. 

A photo of a statue.  A little sculpture in a friend's house--light in the palm of a hand.  A scene in a movie--a couple sharing a mark in the palm of the hand.  Words spoken to inspire volunteers as they head out to serve.  Unrelated to any but the eye that is willing to watch for such things.  To that eye--secret reminders. A hedging.  A guard rail.  Too personal, too topical, too specific to be anything less than a reaching in from a place beyond.
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal.
2 Cor 4:18

And now, the things which are seen make their response.
Even as the moon waxes and wanes--now nearer, now more distant--and the earth can not help but respond, so is the way of such revelation and its path of leading.  It is the way of things, that gravity should have such a power. 
I have no specific old journal entry to add to this one.  It is a post that looks forward with only a background wash from the past.  There are times when looking both toward the past and toward the future give only a rugged landscape for the view. 
There are times when the oasis of things eternal becomes more than an easy platitude to say we embrace.  Times when God asks Satan, "Have you considered my servant, Job?"  And Satan complains that we haven't been tested so of course we serve God; and so God risks His reputation on us and allows temporal things to swell large and things eternal to seem distant.  God allows us to see how much we strive to be satisfied with paltry here and nows, and mostly we can until something concrete reminds that the ache will not end--not really--this side of the grave.  That true and abiding satisfaction, that a sense of fullness and completeness is a thing of eternity, and by faith we ache toward the climax of death.  God allows us to ask ourselves, do we really believe that?

So many changes.  So much inconsistency in life.  Age doesn't assure against it.  Financial security.  Owned property.  A happy family.  Echos on the sonar of what should be out there, in the forever places, but who has actually seen and come back to tell? 

Love brought One back.  Back to tell. 
It is easy to see why she clutched at his feet...

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Party Time!

Chastening.  It never exists in the vacuum where we often meet its counterfeit.  If it is of Godly origins, it is to prepare its "victim" for something fabulous, something that would destroy if the chastening hadn't done its surgical work.  I was ready for that "next thing" after the hard lessons...

July 20
Where are you sending me out on my next campaign, God?
I'm reading a book about someone who had a very successful campaign in evangelizing the hippies in the 70's.  They were the "lepers" of their day's society.  But who are today's lepers?
Thirty years ago, the lepers were the lost thinkers.  But today, lost warriors seem to be the ones to call.  The thinkers were weary and disillusioned and needed rest.  Folk music and beach baptisms were their point of access.
But today's lost are more dead inside, I fear.  Their lost-ness is not just of the mind, but of the heart, the very life-blood's flow.
I'm reading about the parable in which Jesus invites the distinguished, but they are too busy to attend his party; so he invites beggars.  And they might very well come merely out of desperation or curiosity--and this is good enough for the arriving.  Once there, they'd better be dressed for a wedding, or the consequences are severe.  But the initial open door is pretty forgiving. 
And I wonder.  Are we still inviting the desperate ones today?  Is their desperation alone sufficient cause for us to be glad to invite them into the celebration?
Or, are we still trying to track down the last few of yesterday's desperate because after all, their sort are familiar to us, and we know we've hit a level of acceptance from their type in the past?  Are we missing anyone?  A lot of ones?

As for me, I feel drawn to the group I'd call the "divided hearts" out there.  The ones who serve both God and Baal, who still need to learn that Baal and mammon have no ultimate power to satisfy a thirsty soul.  I fear prosperity-preaching, in many of its facets, is like wrapping wool around a wolf.  The idea of "counting the cost" winds up a foundation-less structure in that world of preaching.  Like sand that's been wet, it seems firm and well-shaped until the storm comes--but then it breaks down, making the house collapse anyway.  I think of Luke 15.  The parable for the lost sheep--the one who HAD been in the fold, for the finding of the lost coin that HAD been the woman's and then the great apex: the prodigal who HAD a home and considers returning to it. 

Indeed, if you merely lay out your blessings as your testimony to others, as opposed to laying Jesus Christ before them, then even if you give God the credit, you're still inviting them into a room cramped with piles of covetousness. Can you blame them when they grow bitter at your message?  When they don't see the forest of blessings surrounding them because you're continually directing them to look at your historic blessing tree, one that you've planted right in front of them?  Help them see their OWN trees!  Become less, that He may be more.  Why is this such a hard concept?

It has taken some years for God to groom me in this ministry, and some suffering, too.  I still find He chisels away at my pipes in order to pour Himself through me to  better bless others.  Divided hearts--if you would minister to them at all--require rugged, authentic, vulnerable availability.  Not surprisingly, they require that you be the model of your message--that you not have your own personal, barely-hidden agenda or ulterior motives attached to their being "found" again.  And so you spend a while standing as if naked in a strong, cold wind, saying, "This is great!" while they eye you like you're missing something.  And at best, sometimes all you accomplish is to make them curious. 
But you walk in splendor, nonetheless.  Even if they never really understand what you're doing.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Telling Stories, part 2

Yesterday, I copied these words:
"What shall we do that the people's perception of God not be so much less than God himself? Make something more of our preaching. Allow the preaching itself a human--and then a divine--wholeness: that the whole of the preacher be presently active in proclamation, the whole of the hearer invited to attend, and God will be seen as God of the Whole."  (Preaching, by Walter Wangerin, Jr.)

July 2005.  I'd come to a place where I was subconsciously convinced that I was above most temptations.  I'd read authors speak of getting "behind the temptations of Christ," and that sounded all abstract and hardly an issue to concern me. I would learn differently.

July 19, 2005
The Bride vision and the swelling, swirling bubbles on the gown she wore.  I'm thinking of these lately.  I've been reading about them, too.  "The righteous acts of the saints" is how Saint John describes them in the book of Revelation.  As I saw them, each "bubble" flashed different colors. Was it maybe that each swirl of color was a different person on that particular "wheel" or bubble of righteousness?  I know each life is designed to be part of God's handiwork, a different part of the story of righteousness overall.  I wonder if God the Father constructs the bubbles--the delineation of each righteous bubble, but might God the Spirit orchestrate the colors that swirl across them.  And all this to adorn the one who will "wed" God the Son?  Fanciful thoughts, but anyway the picture is beautiful because it shows how a timeless being could be "active" without being time-locked.  Each life is intended to be a re-expression of spiritual truth about Him, i.e. formed "in His image."
When the age of the Bride "making herself ready" is finished, I wonder how we will go about expressing His image then?  How will we be "in His image" after the wedding feast of the Lamb?

One particular life right now leads my thinking on these things.  His life is an easy-to-realize microcosm of that "in His image" quality, easy to see because of its very comprehensiveness.  Born as if one abandoned, impoverished, taken in by others and raised in a tiny, out-of-the way borough, this person nevertheless grew to become a man of means, a man of influence on multiple continents, a man of wealth.  In many ways, his life represents the full breadth-- the range from end to end--that all men are intended to walk as the point of their existence. God draws Man, woos him from the depths of death and degradation--the tragedy of Man's nature from his very birth--to the royal wealth of joint-heirship with Christ.  Prophets speak of that range: from orphans left to die in their birth-blood,taken up by the very hand of God to a place of mansions.  Here prophecy is replete with language of crowns and of glory, talk that is so different from the talk revolving around Man's infancy. And this one life has that full "story" attached to it.  The entire gamut built into his days.  Only one way is it incomplete.  He does not have the "story" of that far-reaching change playing itself out yet in the arena of love.  He should work for completeness there--though it may not be romantic love, it should be some sort of love--as an act of reverence to God.  If he does not see the "realization of unbelievable potential in all Mankind" as his prophetic life script, then his striving will equal empty vanity, no matter what his level of worldly success.  I speak of its resonance beyond this world.


This life was the first one that God allowed me to see with its glory shining full-bright.   
C.S. Lewis describes human lives this way:  as repositories of glory beyond our wildest imaginings most of the time. 
As he puts it in his sermon, The Weight of Glory:
It may be possible
for each to think too much of his own
potential glory hereafter; it is hardly
possible for him to think too often or too
deeply about that of his neighbour. The
load, or weight, or burden of my
neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on
my back, a load so heavy that only
humility can carry it, and the backs of the
proud will be broken. It is a serious thing
to live in a society of possible gods and
goddesses, to remember that the dullest
and most uninteresting person you talk to
may one day be a creature which, if you
saw it now, you would be strongly tempted
to worship, or else a horror and a
corruption such as you now meet, if at all,
only in a nightmare. All day long we are,
in some degree, helping each other to one
or other of these destinations. It is in the
light of these overwhelming possibilities, it
is with the awe and the circumspection
proper to them, that we should conduct all
our dealings with one another, all
friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no
ordinary people. You have
never talked to a mere mortal...
...
Next to the Blessed Sacrament
itself, your neighbour is the holiest object
presented to your senses. If he is your
Christian neighbour he is holy in almost
the same way, for in him also Christ
vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified,
Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

At the time, I had no idea what this glory laid bare to my spirit's eye would do to me.  That temptation to worship C.S. Lewis mentions:  it is very real.  I fell prey to it.  One life.  I was allowed to see one life this way--this eternal scripting of His-image glory running its course of expression over time in one life, and I was knocked flat on my back by it.  I was not the only one to suffer as I wrestled with comprehension, with soberness, with a willingness to hold loosely what was never meant to be clutched.  I still find those days difficult to describe, but they taught me important lessons:  I was not above the temptation to idolize, merely above the temptation to idolize the inglorious.  I was not above trying to cram things eternal into the parameters of a single day. Finally, I was not to elevate various expressions of Glory Retold to the same level as the Glory Original.  To ask even extra-ordinary people to carry such a burden is terribly unfair. 
So I learned the humility and the seriousness of which Lewis spoke with regards to the "capital N" Nobility of Man.
Since then, I've seen others in this glorified way, but I have been safe in the seeing.  And not only have I seen individuals; I've seen groups, whole congregations even.  They, too, swirl on bubbles first delineated through the stories told in Hebrew scripture.  The Bible-people are the prototypes, but the stories never end.  They never stop being re-told.  Now I see them safely, for that original temptation has never returned--and that mainly because God carefully chose the person who would be the first for me to really "see." He was kindly sovereign though specifically stern with me through that time, chastening me in an area that could have carried great risk, but instead opened great vision.  I remain attentive now.  I no longer "presume" I am above reproach, and in many areas. 
So there you have it:  my wholeness.
Now I see a bit of what is behind Christ's abstract temptations:  I see the easy draw of short-cuts to things eternal.  I see unholy invitations, unholy in that they beg you to grasp at things that can only be held (in this age) by the hands of faith, no matter how strongly--how realistically--those after-time things resonate into the march of days.
Ultimately, I am grateful for learning what I now know about that weight of glory as it spills into our world. 
And I hope to be able to bear its continual display, as long as mankind is able to offer it. 

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Telling Stories

Oswald Chambers says "Suffering burns up a great deal of shallowness, but it does not always make a person better.  Suffering either gives me myself or it destroys my self...The way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow...if you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people."  (My Utmost for His Highest, June 25th entry.)

Here begins my hardest series of  posts because here the telling begins to reveal past weakness, loss of easy honor and innocence for the sake of heightened purity, a necessary tapping heavily of  the grace and mercy of God. 

I chatted with a friend about Christian literature this morning.  She asked, "Have you ever been in a season where you just wanted to be a sponge and soak in as much as you could, but you didn't want to waste it on anything shallow? And you didn't want to soak it in just for the sake of being a heavy wet sponge?"  What followed that comment for me was a newly congealed idea, one that beautifully complemented something I'd been reading.  My response to her was: "The more I read, and the further I go in my walk with God, the more I require a certain spirit to be in the text. Even more than the actual information being conveyed, I need to absorb the spirit."

That observation made me think of Christ's sermons.  So often laced with parables that even his close, traveling companions didn't understand them--stories he would clarify privately later, how did these sermons nevertheless have the power to captivate crowds?  If the information wasn't meticulously laid out in topic and sub-topic format, in three-point presentation with introduction and thorough recap, followed by appropriately-related closing prayer, then how did it draw so many common people to sit and listen--people who would even go hungry so as not to miss a single word?  Was it merely the miracles? 
I don't think so--or at least, not just the miracles.  A spirit surely thrummed over every  word He spoke, and that spirit touched people on another level entirely, one that was more than just a brushing of their intellects. 
So now, more than usual, more than even yesterday--these words of Christ have a nuance, a richer shading than they carried before:  It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life.  (John 6:63.)

Likewise, the words of the very author my friend and I were discussing this morning, his words begin to gong loudly in my ears, playing the same song:

We, the professional faithful, the preachers so earnest for our responsibilities, have measured the arena of God's activity by our own; and the people, glad to be led in definitions, have allowed us to noose the mighty God and to remand him to a tiny space.  To a tiny space, a discrete time, and a handful of particular, prescribed exercises...Moreover...our preaching is largely teaching, explaining and instructing, so the people may assume that God is a matter of the mind (or the heart in more emotional deliveries), but not of the whole human in all its parts.  We say, of a text, "This is what it means."  And we imply that God comes present in the understanding of meanings, even though these meanings be pointing to events!  Our manner communicates more than the matter we deliver, because it is subliminal and qualifies every word we say...
Abstraction, the removing of God from experiential life and permitting him truly to dwell in the analysis alone, is a present-day problem...We pretend God's presence in the whole of our lives, and we believe the pretence, though in fact we honor understanding...the shape of preaching most shapes our God.  And what is the shape of so much preaching today?  Why, it is the shape of the classroom:  teaching.  And teaching is always (in our consideration) one step removed from experience and from the "real."  It is an activity of the mind.  It prepares for what will be; or it interprets what has been; it is separated from both.  The God who is met in doctrines, who is apprehended in the catechises, who is true so long as our statements ABOUT him are truly stated, who is communicated  in propositions, premise-premise-conclusion, who leaps not from the streets, nor even from scriptural texts, but from the interpretation of the scriptural texts--that God is an abstraction, has been abstracted from the Christian's experience.
O Priests, by the will of the people!
O Preachers, by the patterns of this age!
O Teachers, by thine own choosing--you have severely belittled the Deity!  Though your intent was kind and holy, your manner was mousy. Though you brought extraordinary intelligence, a fine education, and assiduous study to your office, you reduced that office to intelligence, its training and its application alone, and this you made the temple of the Lord.
But the providence of God is all creation, all space and time, all things and all events, all the actions of humankind, and all the whole human himself!
What shall we do that the people's perception of God not be so much less than God himself?  Make something more of our preaching.  Allow the preaching itself a human--and then a divine--wholeness: that the whole of the preacher be presently active in proclamation, the whole of the hearer invited to attend, and God will be seen as God of the Whole.
Or, to rush the point:  tell stories.
--Preaching, by Walter Wangerin, from Ragman and Other Cries of Faith (pp.72-76)

But this is easier said than done.  It sounds good, when it's someone else's wholeness that is laid bare.  Much harder when it is your own.  But that is where the authenticity serves, foundational to anything of value that might climb above it , after all.
So I shall try...

Friday, August 3, 2012

Mysticism Always Starts with Someone Laughing...

...probably just because of that verse about God's foolishness out-stripping man's wisdom. 
It proves true with me time and time again with my dream life.  Case in point is the time I dreamed I was a chicken back in 2005:

http://sdmen.blogspot.com/2006/05/last-night-i-dreamed-i-was-chicken.html

But now, that dream has stopped being so very funny. 
It has come to the place of the thoughtful narrowing of the eyes. Of the curtain dropping on the daily stimulus for the sake of deep-soul reflection, at least for a few moments. 
The idea of a bunch of people "being" chickens comes with a new meaning this week. 
God Himself brought that dream back to mind with gale wind force.
Here is some of what I have heard:

Christians must eat specific chicken or not be Christians, some have said.
Others called it not so much a Christian event as a protest against the hyper-regulation of businesses by local mayors who said this chicken place must not open a franchise in their towns. 
But, mostly, the march on these restaurants has been identified with professing Christians who do not agree with gay marriage. 
This restaurant financially supports organizations that speak to this subject, and  some at least, realize they are funding that position and by extension, those organizations.  Some know this and are OK with it.  Others don't know the peripherals at all. 
These are the things I've heard.

I understand the philosophical bent. I understand taking action based on conviction. Everyone has a heart with some level of significant conviction about right and wrong, else we'd all be classed sociopaths.  But the conviction I didn't see anywhere much was gratitude. 
Not until afterward--even for me.
The dawning realization of why this thing grated unsettling.
Oh, yes.  We missed that.
Gratitude for the luck/blessing/karma (whichever each might call it) of being born into a nation so wealthy that we have the luxury of making a political statement with our food choices.  And so, out of respect for all those who must take a hand-out of beans and rice and, for a real treat, the occasional piece of fruit as their daily sustenance, and for those who don't get any food at all--yes, more out of respect for the mother somewhere who watched her child starve to death yesterday rather than for the one who watched her child eat--for the first mother, I fasted. 

And when I broke my fast, I did it under divine directive, which was also borderline comical and according to God's timing. 
I stood in a MacDonald's, planning to order an unsweetened tea and read a book as I had a couple of hours to wait there; but strangely--and sooner than I'd planned, I felt the unction to break my fast.  I looked up at the menu, and the first thing I spied was the fish sandwich.  Immediately, the story of the miracle of Jesus feeding the thousands came to mind.  This.  THIS is the food Jesus feeds.  And what did He do before he disbursed the loaves and fish? 

He gave thanks.

I ate as a sacrament, and I chuckled because it was far from shekinah glory on Mt. Sinai.  It was just me, sitting in a MacDonald's restaurant in the middle of anywhere eating a fish sandwich.  But it was nevertheless a sacrament.  "May we allow Your humble thanks to touch our food, O Lord," I prayed.  And I thought about my dream.

In it, I was one of many chickens on a truck.  I was fortunate enough to be near the side of the truck, which was one of those metal livestock trucks punctured with round air holes.  I could see through those air holes.  From the air above this truck, a snide devil-voice spoke to us chickens. 

"You know, you're only going to the slaughterhouse," he said derisively.

"Yes," I answered.  "But the view along the way makes it worth it." 
Me--a talking chicken looking out an air hole at a glorious view as I rushed toward death.
Comical for years.
Then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, a trumpet sounds, and I am caught up to a different place.
Suddenly this "silly" dream teaches me how to pray this day, when I am disappointed, when I am discouraged at how we are failing to demonstrate  one of Your most benchmark characteristics--and one You specifically identified with food.  You teach me to pray--you taught me 6 years ago--because You saw this day coming.

So now I do pray, from my "silly" dream: help me, Lord.  First, thank You for placing me where I can see through the air holes, and now help me remember to look out, not to just cluck at the other chickens.  Help me notice that not all chickens are positioned to see out, to watch the beauty of your creation outside this truck as that beauty rushes by.  If others on the truck are to know, it must be described to them.  Help me to inspire those who are bedded deeper in the ever-moving truck.  Their's will be the greater faith if I can only be a better witness.

 "Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but blessed is he who keeps the law."  Proverbs 29:18.  You gave me this verse as a dream, I just didn't quite see it until now.  I just laughed.

Sarah laughed.  Until she bore the child.  But the laughter became the namesake, for Isaac means, "he laughs."  That laughter encompasses all You have to say from start to finish.  From the silliness of Your first telling to the joy of the full revelation in the end, it is our destiny to laugh and be joyful in our relationship with You.  It is perfection.