The Song That Plays in My Mind

I have called my blog A Garden Called Gethsemane, 1. because Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and 2. because of the song I am about to post.  There were no roses in the Garden of Gethsemane, I suppose.  In fact, as a garden of Olive trees it must have had some special significance for Jesus that went beyond my understanding.  Sometimes, I think about it.

I know it's significance in being the one source for usable oils that could be consumed and or burned, mirrors attributes of the Holy Spirit. That alone makes the whole garden worth contemplating it's value for Jesus.  I think he wanted his followers to realize that once he was gone, his spirit would never be.  I also believe there is a lot to be said about the fact the Garden still stands today, with it's ancient olive trees, or their replacements.  There remains life, beauty, fruit, history, purpose, and prayer...etc. I could go on-- all which emulate the wonders of the Holy Spirit.  All which give me a sense of peace.  It's longevity should by now at least give us a sense of his promise to never leave us. 

The main thing about the song, however that stands out in my mind, is the word "alone."  Alone, when I think of this garden, and of prayer, never means lonely. It means "me and God!"  WOW, can I say that again----WOW!  Me....and GOD. Alone together.  That never ceases to give me exhilaration, hope, joy, peace. A sense of forever, a sense of perfection and wholeness - not as if I was perfect in my own mind or anyone else's. But because of Christ's work...I am perfectly OK in God's eyes.  His creation, His well loved child. There is no judgment in the garden... Again I could go on.

 Where the Lord meets me, the place is like my own garden, full of a sense of expected future yields. Flowers or veggies or simply as a hiding place for all kinds of life, it never leaves me empty.  I love to have my camera in my gardens, at some point, to capture bits of the moment when evidence of its life and change occur. Because they are fleeting moments, and full of change and seasons.  Like life, they scream to me that these processes are straight out of infinity and in the ever-present NOW at the same time.  The very air screams "you are never alone!" No wonder, my favorite way to meet with God is alone.

So, the phrases of this song play in my mind when I think of prayer and a place to pray.  In my present back yard, I am trying to make places to pause, and hopefully experience those moments with God through the power of his Holy Spirit.  Moments for prayer, to meditate upon him and his creation, to be thankful for all it symbolizes, and for its gifts.  Food and beauty, a reason to live and a sense of purpose. 

"And He walks with me ...and He talks with me..."  Well, let the song speak for itself:

IN THE GARDEN,  by Charles Austin Miles  ~  1912  ~

"AND HE TELLS ME I AM HIS OWN."

Once, 100 years ago, Charles Austin Miles experienced the same blessings from a garden as me. That makes us of one mind, even though he no longer lives.  And there have certainly been thousands of others who have also found themselves ensconced in this precious place with our creator God, and the Spirit that indwells us.  A song like this collects us all into a oneness with God and each other. Something songs are particularly good at doing. Something that also surpasses time and elevates us to a spiritual plane of sorts, and once again dispels any possibility of aloneness meaning being without kindred spirits who know or knew exactly how my heart feels. 

May God be praised, because it is his purpose for providing this encounter. He only desires our Praise as pay. LOL As if we could praise him to within anything near the "pay" he is due.  Loving the garden once more.

Praise God from whom all blessing flow!
Cynthia

Tears Of Joy - from a 5 year old heart

 Anyone who knows me probably knows I am an artsy creature. It's how God made me.  As a child I loved being an artsy creature. It made the world more magical. But it allowed that I could expand on the world I knew by delving into my imagination to create something.
 Oddly, it is also part of why I believed in God, even as a child and especially as an adult.  The Spirit of God has dealt with my heart and mind for all of my life.  And since God is a creator, I felt a kindred spirit.  I always knew that drawing and designing were a gift from him, as well as many of the supplies that I used in my earliest play.

I can play for hours in my Gimp program, with no purpose at all in mind.  Having a purpose for my design makes doing it more difficult than fun.  But for God, I have always thought it must be just the opposite.  I truly believe God must have gotten a lot of fun out of putting his Great design into place and watching his vision grow.  I can, therefore, understand, when we humans decide to not worship him, or even acknowledge him, that he is saddened.

My art is sometimes a means of lifting my own spirits.  Many people I know have issues with the melancholies an artist encounters. They have no tolerance for my tears.  They truly don't understand  why I can't be jolly all the time.  I have heard through out my life the question - "Why are you so serious?" For me, reality is serious, all the laughter and jolliness are forms of denial, and a way of not facing reality.  Life is hard and I just can't laugh it off.  I want solutions, not an ability to put off dealing with reality.  And if it were just me and God, I could go on living life that way.  It's the denial people that make my life hard...LOL. I can laugh about that, you see.

Something I found out, especially as a young woman working in churches, was that my tears were often misread.  I had a pastor once come to me and tell me I could lay it all at the altar, when actually, my tears were evidence of feeling an incredible joy for someone who was saved that morning.  I always believed even angels must be moved to tears, when someone is born again.

Not all tears are about sadness.  I used to cry often. And most of the time, my tears wear tears of joy.  I could be moved at the slightest bit of beauty and it would bring me to tears.  I was full to over-flowing with intense and wonderful emotion.  And people around me would either be wanting to console me, or make me stop crying by shaming me, or cracking jokes.  Why would they take that ecstasy away from me? I never understood.

But as life would have it, I married a man who would eventually do away with my joyful tears.  He was constantly determined to make me smile instead. The result for me has been having health issues, including depressions as a result.  I firmly believe, as well, that many of my physical issues are because I don't have that connection to my world I once had, that which gave me those extremes of joy I once experienced, in child-like freedom. To be who God made me to be.  I  was connected to God in a special way in those times.  I always felt as if he was very near, experiencing that joy along side me. Just because I loved his creation or his work in someone's life, soooo much I cried.

Now that I am older, I have realized - I must be who God created me to be!  AND, I am more vocal, and adamant in my pursuits of being who God created me to be. Tears and Crafty person..all.


I draw more again. I take in the beautiful, to the extent that I sometimes annoy the people around me with my love of the smallest of things. And I leave myself exposed to a lot of criticism.  I still don't cry when the sun sets with a myriad of hues, but I often do when someone is born again. Can't everyone feel the enormity of the God of the universe- bigger than the universe- finding a home in the heart of we who are so small?  Isn't that the most incredible thing? Worth tears - Tears of Joy?

This Christmas, my grandson had two balsa wood craft projects, chosen from lots of sets of kits at our local craft store.  They were nutcrackers, one of his favorite decorations this year.  There is a whole story behind that developing of course.  But to be simple, they arouse in him emotion, for which, from being a boy, his has already been heavily reprimanded for sharing.  So he holds it in inside, to the extent that he even can be heard saying to himself, "I am not going to cry."

Being who I am, I hurt for him.  I worry what effect it will have on his health as well.  But a genuine outward indication of how much he is feeling it, was reflected when he colored his balsa nutcracker crafts.  After meticulously drawing and coloring their uniforms, he drew tiny jagged lines to make the hair and beards look more real, and then from their eyes he drew tears.  I wondered, "had he seen some with tears?," but didn't question. But he asked, "Nana, do you know why they have tears?" as if he read my mind.  As I shook my head "no", he said,

"They are Tears of Joy!  Because they are so happy it's Christmas. "

And to that, I almost cried..."Lord, may he always have Tears of Joy. Please...continue to give him ways to express his ecstasies without reproval."

 I now pray- "may I continue to value my own gift to draw and paint and design my feelings...even my tears of joy. And thank you for this outlet, especially when its for tears of sadness. And especially when the art helps our sadness.  And help us share our Joy, even when we are misunderstood. If not through our tears, then maybe through a more universal expression, our creativity." AMEN

Sunflowers to heal the pain of loss

GONE

Since the tree fell, (in my last post,) the whole landscape of our backyard has changed.  The power company came in and felled several more. To make a long story short, it has been traumatic to us and to our flower gardens. And I have to totally rethink my gardens. but we have made use of the ground up tree limbs to make needed pathways, and having a path is a good first step for any major change in life.
Yesterday was also my 64th birthday.  Also a major change point to my future.  I am trying to put them both into perspective, and I just realized how important it will be to not expect my yard to come into it's own again overnight, much as I would hope to not live the remainder of my life in a few days.  Or even plan it out actually.

From today, I commit myself to begin again, with a new perspective.  To genuinely make my garden be a place of prayer, and my life a place of purpose.

Although the former garden is gone, Sunflowers have come up as volunteers out there.  God's way of making me smile.  No more shade, so make room for the sunny flowers.  I can smile.

A Fallen Tree

The wind blew down an ailing tree a few days ago.  When it fell, I had just walked past the spot, going out to and coming in from checking on the heat in my greenhouse.  I had just come into the house, and removed my coat when a shaking of the house and a loud noise just outside the room where I stood, let me know a tree had come down.  My husband, who was napping, never even heard or felt it, but awakened to my verbal response. "A tree just fell, I am sure a tree just fell!" I ran toward the door fully expecting to find the tree leaned against the house. Realizing I should be careful, I calmed myself a bit and tried to get my husband away from what could be further danger, if the tree came through the house, if it were hanging above it, hung up on electric wires or something.

Just waking, and always skeptical, he was saying his usual, "I doubt it, it's probably just a limb."  And although I hadn't seen it myself, I was confident when I retorted, annoyed and still shaken, "Get up and see for yourself if you don't believe me, but there IS a tree down in our yard!

The instant I stepped onto the deck, I was really awakened to the presence of Angels.  That doesn't happen often in life.  Even though they are always there, you don't notice them except in crisis.  I felt as if  I was sort of in a bubble of safety, kind of other worldly....oh I don't know how to explain awareness of  Angels....when they are active on your behalf, you know, you just know.  And the feeling expanded to an overwhelming awareness of how close I just came to being underneath that tree, except for their intervention.  I felt as if God still had his hand outstretched and the angels were still adjusting their halos. LOL

What I saw when I got outside was beyond belief.  The tree was lying with its tip about 2 inches from the downspout at the corner of the house.  The tip of a dead limb was broken on the deck, but not a scratch was on the deck rail, the side of the house, the roof line, the gutter...nothing. The only thing that had been touched was the cable line, which was pulled from the house where it was attached near the roof; however the box itself wasn't affected at all. I looked back through the door to see if the TV was on, and it hadn't been affected at all.  I looked quizzically at the power lines under the cable line, and wondered how in the world, the tree had missed them entirely.  Or if it hit them, how they were totally unscathed.  I expected there to still be vibration running out their length from being hit, and they were totally still.

 The more we inspected where the tree had fallen, we realized what a tiny space it would have had to fallen into, in order for it not to have hit something, not even considering that it could have killed one of us. That spot is where my husband stands to put wood in the wheelbarrow for our fireplace.  There are support posts for the deck, and the water-hose and wood stacks to prevent you from standing anywhere else. A severe cold was setting in, and we were preparing for the windy cold weather. Any other time Jimmy would have been there in the evening bringing in wood.  But because of the expected storm, I had asked him could we prepare early in case the power went out.  I never once thought of that tree taking our power out at the house. It was just that, let's be prepared mind set you know you should go into just in case.  But here we were, facing what could have been a tough situation, yet still with power, with a major winter storm approaching.  I was immediately thankful and in awe.

God had just set that tree down before an ice storm, in precisely the one tiny place in our yard that it wouldn't destroy something else, protecting us in so many ways.  Had it hit the house and come through the corner, Jimmy might have been injured where he slept.  Had I been only moments longer in my greenhouse, I would have been walking there as it fell.  In so many ways, I was glad that tree was down safely.  No children to be injured in my back yard....I could just go on. The realizations rushed in and I became overwhelmed.  I began to cry, as I thought how I had just faced the moment when I could have died, but God chose that I should live. 

For about an hour I felt angina, as if I might have a heart attack, as my anxiety rose. It was as if the moment of shock, when the tree fell, had caused a blockage to occur.  (My husband has had several heart attacks, so I know the lingo.)  But as I thought of how God had just spared my life, it seemed ridiculous that he was going to take it with a heart attack.  So I forced myself to be calm and took a blood thinner (asperin+), and did everything I could to be calm.  I promised myself.."this is not a heart attack."

In the days that have followed, I have become weary in the record setting cold, snow and ice, of climbing over that tree to get to my green house, or of walking around the house in the wee hours of the night.  In the cold, I must check it more often, and at any hour that it is the coldest.  If the low tech heat sources fail, everything will freeze.  And for a while this afternoon, when I had no sleep last night, and all I could do was fall asleep today, I thought for a moment, why am I doing all this for a few plants?

But then I heard the still small voice say, "I didn't help you keep these plants safe for this long this winter, and direct that tree off the greenhouse, just for you to give up now.  We are in this together."
It wasn't just myself and my husband God spared, but the greenhouse and its contents.  In fact, He's pulled it through record breaking temps as well.  A propane tank I use for emergencies, which I burn  for about 4 to 5 hours on the coldest nights, burned for 11+ hours last night - while the temps went to 6 degrees outside.  And it didn't smoke, although the flame was so small at daybreak you couldn't even see it.  It burned so cleanly, that it was invisible, but the heat was there as proof of it's burn.  When I think of all that has happened this week on our behalf, I am so humbled.  Once again, God and his angels were there, making those little miracles that whisper, I am here, my child, see me.

Thank you Jesus.  Thank you.  I am in awe. AMEN

Bottling Our Tears

You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book? Psalm 56:8

This is a journal. I don't always enter the things God is using in my life to bring me through each day in his presence. But some things, I love to record and read again and again.  This is one of them.

There is a lot of sorrow among friends and family. With sorrow comes tears. I am a fan of tears, and of  crying in general. I believe that it helps to cleanse our emotions, and relieve the pressure to keep us from bottling it up, to making it explode later.  I see emotions like anything that we keep inside a bottle until it ferments, and eventually will explode if not properly contained.  Some things contained get better with age, some become vile, and emotions become vile.  So we release them with tears, and according to scripture, God bottles them instead. Interesting concept, Release emotions, bottle tears.  Will have to think on that some. 

But, my usual study practice is to take a word and make note of all the scriptures that are relative to the meaning of the word that suits my questioning heart. What generally occurs, is there is a progression from the earliest scriptures that develops a mindset of understanding.  A principle develops, and the mind of God, looking at the subject from several angles, gives a picture of God's thoughts on the subject.  This study on tears was exactly that.

Watch the progression. See if you put together the puzzle:

•  My eyes pour out tears to God. Job 16:20b

• Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. II Kings 20:5b

• He will swallow up death forever, And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces; Isaiah 25:8 b

• Thus says the Lord: “Refrain your voice from weeping, And your eyes from tears; For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, And they shall come back from the land of the enemy. Jeremiah 31:16

• Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:24

Notice the phrases:

• "put my tears into your bottle," "in your book"
• "pour out Tears to God"
• "on the third day"
• "God will wipe away tears"
• "come back from the land of the enemy"
• "help my unbelief"
• "for your work shall be rewarded"

What do we learn? ~

1. A willingness to release the pain to God's keeping, which does not go unnoticed. God records it, values our tears, notes our pain, begins the story of our recovery and follows it through with us.
2. We must then act upon our willingness ~ cry, pray, pour out our heart to him. Let it be known to God. But release it.
3. Next is a reference to the future day of Christ on the cross, when the fullness of our healing is complete. The inference for us is to lay the burden at the cross, in full recognition of the resurrection.  See the hand of God in our circumstances as if he has now bottled our tears, recorded our need, and has completed what is necessary to make a solution possible. See it as if it were already finished, and place faith in that.
4. Look to the day that God will wipe away out tears.  Don't expect that it happens immediately, but it could help to refocus on Jesus and not on our pain.
5. Turn our back on Satan. Satan uses our pain as a weak point, where he aims his attacks. We sometimes wander into his territory by allowing him during our weak points to bombard us with his negative, discouraging thoughts. I know I am vulnerable to this. Part of what makes the saying, "when we are weak, He is strong;" true of God, is that during our weakness, He is hard at work trying to divert our attention from Satan's lies. We need to find the stillness, quietness with him to hear it. With awareness, we can walk out of the land of Satan. He will make the path clear.
6. Inevitably, we will need help in some area.  Our faith often falters, from fear, confusion, and continued attacks by Satan. It never hurt to recognize our struggle to believe is also an area where prayer can be a battle cry. 
7. No one said it would be easy, but God promises success if we follow him. "Your work shall be rewarded.

Lastly, I wanted to say that I noticed while I was reading the scriptures of the Old Testament, that the practice of the ancients was to cry a lot.  They seemed to believe that the more they cried, the more God listened.  In the new Testament, Jesus noted that the Pharisees of his day, made long prayers. Knowing the ancient customs, they may have cried false tears as well. (me imagining.)  It became a religious thing to cry out in public, to make them selves look like they were honoring the scripture in a way that was more pleasing to God than the tears of the humble who cried in their homes. Many old religions include people, especially women in the streets, crying loudly so their gods will hear.  I believe that Jesus was warning against this when he said not to behave like Pharisees and Sadducees.

Tears don't have to be private, but they don't benefit us much if we think the more we beg of God the help we desire, while crying and continuing long in prayer, the more he hears us. We miss the point. God wants us to move forward, through healing.  Like stages of newness. The ancients and the religious didn't see the whole picture.  Going before the Lord in tears, doesn't get his attention. It is merely step 1 in humbling ourselves before him, and honoring his process, accepting it, and asking him to come along side as we walk through the process.

That's the God I serve. The one who doesn't leave me drowning in my tears, but respects my feelings, and the fact that I hurt badly enough to be crying.  So much so that he begins a record of my healing, and he starts it by bottling my tears.  Impactful in the least, to me.  In fact, I would say that the process also ends in tears for me. Because I cry tears of joy as well.  I suppose he bottles those and marks the day of my rejoicing, so the record is complete.  Because God is the God of finished works and new beginnings.  (numbers 7 and 8.)

I couldn't help but notice that there are 6 items in the list that are about my human part - 6 is the number of man.  And the 7th item is what God does in the end - 7 is the number of completion, to be finished. 

Thank you, Lord for your perfect plan.  Thank you for something like Bible Gateway that allows a quick research for opening the word in its fullness.  And for lessons so easily learned.  But also for the Holy Spirit which explains the truths to us.  It is an evidence to me that you have always existed to provide for us, your creation, even to the extent of bottling our tears.

In Jesus name, AMEN