I awaken early each day. The first thing I do is listen to SDT. Then I reflect on the text and pray. I have been so filled with the Word through the reflected and refracted glory of God in this Elijah story through the eyes and voice of JD Walt, some morning I find myself needing to close my eyes and sleep again to allow it to settle in my spirit and nourish me to see what further glory of God I might glean from it…….
We lack the vision that comes from hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of Christ; we fail to show mercy as we have received mercy; and we cling to the dirty rags of our own good works so that purity of heart cannot be found in us….. And we cannot see God in the reflections and refractions of His glory all around us in the lives of His holy vessels, the broken jars of clay, the living sacrifices upon the altar of God, those suffering upon the crosses by which they, too, are being lifted up ….. They are the saints-in-waiting and the saints-becoming who will embody and who are already the eternal living Body of Christ in the world now and forever. Bones are always being rattled and joined with sinew and muscle, made beautiful with new skins, and breathed into by the ever-creating God of Hope and Life.
When we are caught up and conforming to the repetitive patterns of poverty (material or spiritual) and grieving our sense of brokenness and aloneness in the world- and having to be humbled again and again until we embrace the teachable and obedient meekness of Christ we will miss the transforming power in the pattern of daily being satisfied in our hunger and thirst for the Word and Spirit that forms us in righteousness, acting justly and loving mercy, so that our hearts will be pure and our eyes capable of beholding and becoming the Light.of the world, reflecting the justifying grace imputed upon us and refracting the sanctifying grace imparted within us that is the image of God’s glory that reveals the Spirit of the Prince of Peace present in and through us ….. at peace with God, within ourselves, and at peace among the people of God until the day we, too, are taken up in a chariot of fire and transfigured forever, as Jesus was in His resurrection, ascension, and in His Spirit’s heavenly fire from heaven at Pentecost.
find myself needing to sleep again each morning to allow it to settle in my spirit and nourish me to see what further glory of God I might glean from it…….
We lack the vision that comes from hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of Christ; we fail to show mercy as we have received mercy; and we cling to the dirty rags of our own good works so that purity of heart cannot be found in us….. And we cannot see God in the reflections and refractions of His glory all around us in the lives of His holy vessels, the broken jars of clay, the living sacrifices upon the altar of God, those suffering upon the crosses by which they, too, are being lifted up ….. They are the saints-in-waiting and the saints-becoming who will embody and who are already the eternal living Body of Christ in the world now and forever. Bones are always being rattled and joined with sinew and muscle, made beautiful with new skins, and breathed into by the ever-creating God of Hope and Life.
When we are caught up and conforming to the repetitive patterns of poverty (material or spiritual) and grieving our sense of brokenness and aloneness in the world- and having to be humbled again and again until we embrace the teachable and obedient meekness of Christ we will miss the transforming power in the pattern of daily being satisfied in our hunger and thirst for the Word and Spirit that forms us in righteousness, acting justly and loving mercy, so that our hearts will be pure and our eyes capable of beholding and becoming the Light.of the world, reflecting the justifying grace imputed upon us and refracting the sanctifying grace imparted within us that is the image of God’s glory that reveals the Spirit of the Prince of Peace present in and through us ….. at peace with God, within ourselves, and at peace among the people of God until the day we, too, are taken up in a chariot of fire and transfigured forever, as Jesus was in His resurrection, ascension, and in His Spirit’s heavenly fire from heaven at Pentecost.