Dreamtime

Have you ever had a dream so vivid that it felt like reality?  You wake to "reality" and wonder how what you just experienced while sleeping could possibly be a dream.  This is New Zealand to me now.  I am awake in my reality wondering how the years we spent in New Zealand is just a dream now, a very vivid dream. Sometimes I think God allowed me that time in the land of the long white cloud just to bring home to my soul what my current day to day is vs. heaven.  Even though my time in NZ feels like a vivid dream to me now I know for certain that I stood on that dirt, breathed that air, saw that green, tasted those blueberries.  You couldn't convince me otherwise.  I know it in my soul.  The reality of the eternal is like that.  I know it in my soul.  I have tasted bits of eternity throughout my life, joy that exceeds containing, friendship sweeter than anything, hope in the blackest of nights.  You couldn't convince me otherwise.

In my experience God specializes in hands on training and living word pictures.  He goes to great lengths to reveal truth to me and His patience while doing so knows no limitations.  It could easily be that the years spent in that lovely land were to this end only.  Regardless I'm pretty sure I won't know this side of eternity, so for now I will just be thankful for the dream.

Unseen

I've been contemplating the state of being unseen lately. Western culture is full of elbows and jostle as everyone pushes against the crowds wanting to be seen, to be heard and acknowledged. I completely understand this. It's at the core of all of us, the desire to be seen. Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's a God thing at it's root, a hunger he installed meant to be fulfilled by himself, but without God it gets ugly and loud.  Can I be content to be only seen by One?  If I return to dust having never been seen, applauded, acknowledged can I do so satisfied that it was meant to be so?  

I think of generations gone by and how many complex stories, beautiful thoughts, magnificent talents,  and rich lives settled into the dust with only a handful of people ever knowing the wealth of those souls.  They lived in small communities where their names were known but beyond the town limits no one had ever heard of them.  Did they live content in this smallness?  Is it small?  Surely it's no small thing to only touch the lives of a handful of people.  Beauty is beauty whether the human eye beholds it or not.  Character forged in the fires of this life shines for eternity regardless of applause this side of heaven.  And yet it remains a struggle to be faithful in the small stuff when no one sees.  Living before an audience of One, it takes surrender, humility and resolve.

To be continued.

Desk note #1

 A cup of mediocre tea, creamer from a plastic container, 1/2 a square of chocolate.

Where to file all these thoughts.  

Grief is a sneaky beast.  Stalking the soul in silence, lurking.  Routine interrupted by it's pounce.  It only takes one talon to draw blood, rip the whole scab off.  Triage all over again.

There is no way to guard the heart from grief.  It permeates.  Finds a way in.  

They say keep moving.  But I haven't.  I'm frozen in my tracks, eyes locked and I can't look away, can't put my head down and walk past quietly, unobtrusively.  It's already seen me, found me out with my tepid tea and chocolate crumbs.