Yellow dog tail points straight attention and the Pointer in her shows till she looks like an arrow poised on three legs because the fourth is pointing to squirrel, of course. She darts full awake and oblivious to all that sleeps-in drowsy this side of fence. The back side. But this slab of sunlight persists like the illuminated hand on the face of the clock that hasn't heard the alarm yet. It stretches through slats from the other side; the side that's all awake and knocking at the gate, "Wake up, back there!"
Well, yellow dog belongs on the other side of the fence this morning because we're just warming up back here. Just stretching off the night till shadows lift, and I sip coffee half-way down the mug.
A few leaves fall lazy. A web reaches long extension from lowest tree branch to highest eve and insects the color of air and size of dew just float uncaught by web, but caught by sun. And caught, too, is a branch that fell out of the tree sometime last year and it's been straddling the limb that caught it ever since then. It just dangles there like Huckleberry Finn would straddle some limb in some tree and swing his legs happy and fearless.
It's quiet. I'm quiet. God is quiet. Yeah, yellow dog is galloping and grinning and I hear the neighbor shutting car door and motoring to work and somewhere from pecan woods an ax splits into echo. But it's quiet, still. I'm at peace.
College girl can't find her keys, so she borrows mine. And then I can't find her keys, so high-school junior girl has no way of getting to school. We're sharing cars. She's waiting and the second hand on the clock is wide-awake nervous jitter just all "Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two" count down till she's so late for first period that she might as well skip it. She does.
And I'm at peace.
That second hand can jitter like it's had too much coffee and it can just spring right off the face of time if it wants to, but I've just sipped long shadows from the back-side of time this morning.
And I'm filled with peace.
It's palpable, peace is. And this tardy junior feels it. It's like I fetched peace in the backyard and brought it inside like yellow dog fetches morning from the front-side of fence and brings it in. It's like that. I've fetched peace and junior girl sees it and just sets aside her book bag, retrieves the French Press and presses out gradual the Haitian coffee she smuggled from summer mission trip to Haiti. Yeah, she did. Right past the noses of the security dogs at customs. Maybe one day she'll smuggle Bibles and Haitian coffee is just practice.
Book Bag
Thing is, this morning is all about peace. Fetch it like a retriever and bring it inside because seconds tick off fast and this world is spinning and staggering and lurching on leash, but God's hand holds the reins and real time ticks out the beat of His heart, not mine and not the "60 Seconds News" channel.
I don't listen to it, the news. I admit it. Maybe I should, but I hear enough of it second and third hand to keep me glued to the "Eternal Edition," to know what's going on in God's heart and in the country I'm a citizen of. It's just that I need to keep Him and the news of His kingdom ever before me because one day there will be some who want to enter His country and to live in His eternal kingdom, but have let their heart beat in time with this world and they won't know what time it really is until it's too late.
It happens just an off beat here and there. Just an extra pump of the way life beats it out on this earth and there's prolapse of mitral valve in soul. I know what it feels like, because I have a mitral valve prolapse and surely there's connection between the anxiety my soul feels and when my heart beats extra.
Make the Good News both base line and bottom line and faith will pump it out grand and real. I must, lest my soul beat out what faith doesn't recognise. Lest soul beat out pragmatic, subtle counterfeit currency and I become like the many I'm warned about in Scripture. May I not sip at faith like I sip morning coffee just half-way down mug and say "yes" to be marked, indelible currency, and sell my faith for a loaf of bread. That's what pragmatism does. It reduces those who buy into it to sell themselves for a loaf of bread because they forget in a prolapsed moment that they were bought by the Bread.
I know I have a mitral valve prolapse. I may prolapse into pragmatism. It's deceptive, and I'm quite capable of becoming deceived. I am reminded of this every time I hear a preacher polish out how God doesn't want me to be uncomfortable and if I am, then it's not from Him.
Seems to me that faith isn't meant to be shiny, but well worn; and may I never question the faith of a brother who suffers disease, or who is caught in a long web, or languishes depressed, loses financial freedom, suffers injustice, injury, insanity. Because it's likely that those who suffer are the ones who actually do faith. Not just have it, but do it. Likely that those who bear the scars of doing faith are they who hope with every heart beat in the Bread whose heart hemorrhaged on the cross and sold Himself for their salvation. They never forget that bread doesn't come nicely wrapped up in the bread isle but from grain that falls into the ground and is ground up.
Miller's Stone
And it seems to me real faith rises up from places called, "into the ground," and then becomes ground on the miller's stone and here I say it in sanity and real, "You have overcome the world; overcome me!"
"I will make you as manna and many will say of you, "What is it?" The Miller grinds it like that and, well, that's fine because I'm looking for reasons to hope, not for ways to survive. Looking to gain a good testimony living faith out real because there's nothing counterfeit fake about the testimony of a faith that's been tried and tested and comes out hope full. And in His kingdom right here at the back-side of the backyard fence, and right now in Him in me, there are scars we bear and there is peace.
I am at peace. Just peace.
Because there is peace in faith that is tried and found real.
Peace in the absence of prolapse, exhaustive proclamations, counterfeit claims all aimed against the very trials meant to prove faith real.
I am at peace because I'm not looking desperate for ways to survive, but looking for reasons to hope and finding, "Faith is the evidence and substance of things hoped for but not seen" (paraphrase of Hebrews 11:1). I am at peace when I find this in the very trials and triumphs that validate my hope.
This is the real thing.
Nothing counterfeit.
Everything well worn up.
And I'm in it, waking up on the back-side and a little worn rough this morning; but in it like this just looking for reasons to hope.
And finding peace.
written by: Carolyn~Elizabeth Roehrig
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