journal

"Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I.... a feather on the breath of God."

This was how Hildegard of Bingen described herself in the twelfth century. My understanding of this statement grows more and more intimately every day. There came a point in my life when I really began to comprehend God's sovereignty. With this realization came worship; real, vibrant, vivacious wonder at and of the Godhead. I have come to understand worship to be my response to who the Lord God is, and what He has, is, and will be doing at any given place, in any given life. I wonder as I wander as I worship.

I once believed I worked to provide for my family. How I presently see the foolishness in that! I now work purely to glorify the Lord ( not that I have attained...). He has proven His provision for my life apart from work. Whether to work or not to work, that is not the question. Rather, why do I work? Answer: because the Lord has given it to me. My industry, my artistry, my money, my relationships, my very life is given to me by the Lord Yahweh. I do not earn my living. It is by the grace of God that I have food, clothing and shelter. When one's eyes are spiritually opened to this Truth, the riches of heaven become all the more evident and available. When you treasure the Kingdom of Heaven more than mammon; who and what and where you are matters little or not at all. I am a pilgrim and a stranger; a child of Zion and bride to the Bridegroom. His very whisper thunders in my spirit and so I hear my Lover's voice like I hear no other's.

Am I rich? Certainly not by man's standards! Rather, I rejoice in my poverty. When I lack something it is enjoyable to see how the Lord will provide it without using my own resources. And how He has provided! Vehicles, household items, professional musical instruments, an album; friendships abound, I am warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and my wife and I go on vacation every year - all for under twenty-four thousand dollars a year! Understand, I work very hard. I simply don't make much money. But that's not the point! The point is I am rich in salvation; in mercy, grace, and forgiveness. I abound in the lovingkindness of the Most High God. I am a living temple for the Spirit of God, and, being made for His good pleasure, I am a being designed specifically to glorify Yahweh to the utmost. Hallelujah! What a Saviour!

I invite response and query. I encourage community and seek out others who hunger and thirst for personal holiness, deeper worship, and satisfaction in Christ Jesus.

"Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are - one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 'Ulysses' Alfred, Lord Tennyson