Into Your Heavenly World-a song I wrote

Your mercy for me, a sinner,
Would be more than I could believe;
But Your love lifted You up to be crucified instead of me.

You were pleased to look upon me,
Though I didn't see You at all;
But now it's clear, Your love is dearer than anything I have loved before.

Eagle
charcoal by Carolyn-Elizabeth

chorus-
Oh, the life You lived! Oh, the death You bore!
Your resurrection is my only cure.
Oh, You forgave my debts! One day I'll soar
Into Your heavenly world.

When I love my life more than Yours,
It's a tiresome burden to bear;
You rescue me beyond degree;You take the weight of my cares.


written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

Figgy Grinning Faith

Jesus. A borrowed donkey. Crowds. "Praise God!", they shouted. "Blessings on the One who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessings on the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David! Praise God in the highest Heaven!" (Mark 11:9-10).

HE IS NOW RISEN!

How still, focused, His heart must have been. Was He contemplating His last days on this earth? Borrowed, too? The eternal One borrowed the tock of time; yet the Father had given all things into His hands, and somehow His hands were fullest when they gaped wide where the nails gouged through. The hands that held all things, tore holding a nail. And some say that He became sin for us, but wasn't it enough that He held sin for us? That He owned it? Took it into, literally into, His hands and carried it away forever?

HE IS NOW RISEN!

Did He look at the crowd as He rode to the temple and think something like, "Some of these will soon become living temples of the Holy Spirit?" And as He rode over the soiled garments and leafy branches that had been cut in the fields, did He think something like, "Some of these will take off the old and be clothed in the new," for it would be written Ephesians 4:17-24. Did He think something like, "Some of these laying down cut off branches will be themselves cut off," for it would be written, "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered" (John 15:16). And did He think, too, "Some of these will befriend Me and lay down their lives and die to themselves to live for Me," for it would be written, "Greater love has o one than this, than to lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends"? (John 15:13).

HE IS NOW RISEN!

Well, He passed through the crowds and simply entered the temple. That's all. Oh, and He carefully looked around. And I wonder, "What was that hoopla all about?"

I'm sure most of the crowd really had no idea either. Most get caught up in the excitement. In the loud. But what of those who worshiped in the loud, "Hosanna in the highest"? Did they have an inkling back in their souls what this was all about? Did something stir within those who would themselves become living temples for the holy Christ, inhabited by the glory of His Spirit after He gave it up? Did they, like Mary, mother of Jesus, ponder these things in their hearts after the crowds dispersed and Jesus looked silently and carefully around the temple that had become a short cut for merchants because it was quicker to trample through the holy place than to go around it in reverence on the way to work, and that had become prostituted, defiled?

NOW HE IS RISEN!

My Lent Journey-40 candles, 40 days, and the crown of thorns is crown of glory light

He left the temple after looking around, and the next morning He cursed a fig tree. I can't escape the sequence of these things. The sequence of riding into Jerusalem, the crowds and the garments and leafy branches cast down; His entrance into the Temple. And then He curses a fig tree.

"Surely, Lord," I ponder these things in my heart, "You weren't angry because Your stomach was growling and You wanted figs." He's not a spoiled child throwing a fit of divine proportion.

 I wonder about the fig, because there's something spiritual here. I google. Yeah, I know, but this temple that I am is in the iPhone era. So I google and find that the fig symbolizes fruitful abundance and blessing and some called it "the fruit of Heaven."

"You looked around the Temple. Carefully." My pondering continues. "Were You looking for fruitful abundance? Hoping to find a single seed of holy worship somewhere in the Temple? And did You search through the fig leaves with the same hope?"

"I hunger for fruit that blesses the Kingdom of My Father." It's His response.

"I want to feed Your hunger, Jesus." And I do. I want Him to be happy when He looks around my inner life and I'm bold to say it, "I hope to have Your attention when You search the earth to and fro. I hope You may see a branch of fig tree bowing 'neath the weight of the fruit it bears for You. I hope to bless You like that."

He is quiet. He lets me chew on these hopes of mine. He gives me time to ingest them.

I take the time, quietly. Slowly savoring sweetest desire in the way that the gentle flavor of figs is tasted fullest. It's a gentle fruit with mild flavor. It's not a loud, here-I-am kind of fruit, but one that hides under fig leaves. It's a modest fruit. Modest, but full of tiny seeds. Just so full that there seem to be more seeds than flesh.

AND HE IS RISEN!

"Lord!" My mouth is full of fig, "Daa's id! I wan' more tseed an' less me!"

He quirks a brow and, "Mff, fmm hmff!" He sucks His cheeks in, but a smile breaks open and He's got tiny dark seeds caught between His teeth.

I smile back, because I do too, and we grin just all figgy at each other. Swallow.

"I meant," I begin.

"I know," He wipes His mouth with the back of His hand.

"I do want to be full of figs. Full of figs heavy with seed," I explain more to hear myself say it.

"My sweet fig," it's a new nick name, "the words of your mouth and the thoughts of your heart are pleasing to Me."

Aren't the most pleasing words to Him the words that He has spoken? And surely when I speak what He's spoken, He will be pleased to do it. It's true. He says so. And whatever is holy fruit in this temple that I am, is fruit to satiate Christ's hunger.

Jesus went to the temple looking carefully for any fruit, even a seed small as a fig seed. Then He went to the fig tree and looked carefully for even one fig. He found no fruit in temple or tree and overturned tables and withered the tree.

Then the third day He said, "Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain," I stop here mid-sentence, because He's pointing to the mountain of fruitless and now dead fig tree.

"Dead faith?" I ask.

"It's a mountain," He responds.

I continue the sentence, "whoever says to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea." I say this and, "Lord, I don't  doubt." And I don't. I don't doubt when I pray His word. It's His word.

And this is how a mountain of fruitlessness is cast out all withered.

"I can't doubt in my heart, but can only believe that those things which You say will be done." I confess this, and somehow this confession is found growing in the fold of living forgiveness just as figs grow where fig leaves enfold the fruit.

AND HE IS RISEN!

Resurrection Glory

I know this is true. It's why I pray His word.

Remember the hour when I chose to pray Your word?" I had run out of my own words.

"Oh, I remember it clearly," He just laughs with a Father's delight when a child begins to sound like Him.

"And You remember when I chose to forgive. When I just said, 'I choose,' even though I didn't know much more about the choice than it's what You said to do."

"And you did choose. Again and again and again." He remembers.

"I know," I sort of laugh about it a tad embarrassed because forgiving is a hard learned and oft repeated practice and in those days, 'I forgive' was what I said. It's just what I said.

"And now?" He prompts because a glance back is all that's needed. Just a glance

"And now!" I exclaim. "And now, truly, my prayers are answered. Just answered like You said they would be.

Well, I say "my prayers," but what I mean is "His word." He answers His word; and I make His word my prayers because His word's gotten into me just as miraculously as seeds somehow get into the flesh of the fig. For me, if "No" is the answer then I figure I prayed not in His name, but in mine; because God never says "No" to His own word. Never says "No" to His own name and character.

"My dear," He says it with that tone of knowing tenderness, "you need not feel apologetic for how it sounds to say that I have answered every prayer you've prayed, believing because you don't doubt My word."

"Thank You." He's said this before I need the reminder. "You have changed my heart's desire. My desire's are mercifully upended and withered.

"Keep chewing on faith! And you are most attractive when you speak with your mouth full of fig and seeds stuck between your teeth." He's laughing outright.

HE IS RISEN FOREVER!

I grin figgy.


Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

When You're Ninety Percent in Deep Water

I pat heads and hug necks. I rub soothe into shoulders and stroke hair tangled by tears. And pray. Sometimes silently and sometimes not because sometimes someone is over ninety percent in some deep water and the remaining ten percent is bobbing like the tip of an iceberg just trying to breathe without pitching under. But God? He  hugs the heart and soothes the being. He prays and His words reach soul-bone and spirit-marrow. His words reach depths far deeper than ninety percent of anything and everything. His reach is one-hundred percent of His depth and requires not a shave more. 

He keeps my head up.

He keeps me from going under.

He liberates me till my captivity isn't ninety percent in deep water, but one-hundred percent in Him. 

He tips me into His depths till I'm captivated by freedom. "I declare this about You, Lord," I say and it's Psalm Ninety-One I proclaim; not my own proclamation. 

His depth is shelter wild.

I think about Adam and Eve sheltered in the garden of Eden. I wonder where God led them as they walked with Him in the cool of the morning. Did He take them to the rivers Pishon, and Haddakel, Gihon, and Euphrates? I used to know what the names of these rivers meant. I've forgotten, but I've got google. I look them up. 

 

Pishon means, "Freely Flowing." I wonder if they stopped to sit and quietly talk while absentmindedly fingering the grass and tiny wild flowers on the banks of the Pishon River. Did the three of them recline on the fragrant soft earth? Did the conversation flow as freely as river flow, and as the River of Life flows right out from the throne of God Himself? Did He surf the River of Life just for fun and land on the banks of the Pishon to walk with the man and the woman He made?

I wonder if they laughed and ran alongside the Haddakel river as if to race the rapids? Yeah, Haddakel means, "Rapids." 

 And what was the mood when walking with God by the Gihon? Maybe joyful? Maybe the kind of joy that bursts forth just clearest from the bottom of the heart kind of laughter plash as Gihon means "Bursting Forth."

And the Euphrates, "That Which Makes Fruitful." Man, woman, and God. Was there a more fruitful threesome on this earth? Surely the man and his woman would partake with no shame of the sweetest fruit God gave to them alone to taste. And what about the fruit of God's Spirit? Isn't He the One who makes fruitful even now, so far removed from the Garden of Eden? He is. And aren't man, his woman, and God still the most fruitful threesome this earth can know? I think so.

 

By the River

 

I wonder to God, "Did the man and his woman ever ask You what was on the other side of the rivers? Or were they so freely and joyfully consumed by Your presence and the life they lived within the river boundaries whose names describe Your name that they never thought to question?"

"The serpent hissed." He need say nothing more.

 
"Why do the whispered suggestions get to us so?" The question may bob just above water, but the answer plumbs depths of holiness. For there is holy whisper that silences any other whisper and the thing is that the only One who never fell is the only begotten Son of God. 

 The thought stops me. Angels fell. Lucifer, the most luminescent angel, fell and became the most ugly snake that ever was. He was a walking snake and maybe since then snakes have been shown some mercy because they glide now. Or maybe the mercy's been shown to the likes of me because I just cannot, cannot imagine a walking, talking snake in the tomato bed.

 Well, God made man a little lower than the angels and that says a lot. "So," I venture, "what did You mean when you said, "It is good" every time You made something; including man? And what about when You said, "It is not good" when man didn't have his mate, and then "It is good" once You brought forth woman?"

 I'm thinking His definition of the goodness of His work is based on nothing but His plan, which is perfect. That the definition of His goodness is based on His perfectness. Could it be that, "It is good" meant far more than the goodness of all He created? That it meant, "All this good is for the sake of My plan"? 

 Maybe His plan is far larger than man and woman never bending an ear to the unholy whisper, or never falling into sin. Maybe the fall is actually part of His perfect plan because wasn't the plan always for redemption and salvation? For hope that He alone can fulfill? And how can such a plan be completed if creation and we ourselves, have no need of it? 

 I don't know, but I do know that the fall was of glacial proportions and splitting and that the echo of it still rumbles through pages of scripture that I plumb till I'm over ninety percent submerged in the word and wanting more.  I hope toward the Day when, Lord willing, I'll be one-hundred percent submerged in the depths of heaven's heights just freest within the boundaries of the depth and height of His perfect plan. 

 His perfect plan is freedom and boundary. I long to plumb it, and be buoyed by it, at the same time. 

 
I trust this holy wild. I do. But I have questions and some of them sort of bob at the surface kind of like the tip of an iceberg. 

 How do I love the heavenly One while I'm still just so clay? I wonder to myself while I pat heads and give hugs and murmur empathy just so warm, "There, there; it'll be okay." I say it as I stand on feet of clay in my own wilderness because I am, you see, still in this body on this earth hoping that something of the presence of the God I'm making my home in will land on the heads I pat and enfold the necks I hug and maybe His home address will  be whispered in the ears I murmur comfort into.

 But He murmurs Psalm ninety-one against my ear, "Do not dread the disease that stalks, nor the disaster that strikes." 

 I think about the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden. 

 "These evils will not touch you," he continues the Psalm and I have to think that God is a realist but sometimes what He says seems removed from earth-bound realities. 

 "What do You mean, 'These evils will not touch you?'" I ask because Eve touched the fruit. Then picked it. Then tasted it. Then swallowed it; and every blood-pumping heart, and reasoning soul, and cellular fabric of strength has been stalked and stricken since. 

 And now the Garden is guarded. And now on this side of Eden wall there are slums and open sewers, and gangs, ghettos, disease that stalks in the darkness, and disaster that strikes at midday, and danger breaks in at night and a sunny day is hungry for light. 

 "Does Psalm Ninety-One dare to pre-script, prescribe even, the very words Satan himself would use to tempt the Son of God in the wilderness?" It's a tip of the iceberg kind of question that answers deep. God is silent while I just bob for answers.

 "Is the way, within the boundaries not of Eden but of wilderness, prescribed to and by the perfect begotten Son of God the same prescription against the touch of evil?" All I know is what the word says. "Do not dread." And how Jesus answered the script. "It is written."

 
Do not dread what befalls in the wilderness, because Jesus didn't dread, and didn't fall, in the wilderness. 

 Do not dread because, well, wasn't it good that the perfect Son of God was tempted in every way we are? And that in God's strange sovereignty, the deeming of "It is good" is the champion of what is redeeming? Of what is perfect plan of God? 

 Do not dread, because the celebrated and the dreadful doesn't revolve around me as if I were the center of the universe. 

 Do not dread because, yeah, creation and man are not the center of the universe.

 Maybe the slap-slosh is the knock-knock on the door of the deep and doesn't deep call to deep like this? Doesn't a deep knock on the door of the deep call forth more deep?  

 Do not dread the icy wild. 

 Do not dread the restrictive pressure and kick against it to be free, because freedom is in the depths of God.

 

Iceberg

 Well, I'm a warm water gal adverse to water temperature below body temperature. Was I not formed within the watery boundary and press of womb? And maybe I kicked, but that's not the pressure that delivered me into this wild, and kicking all dread doesn't deliver me into the depths of the Living Water, a holy wild to be sure. 

 In flesh womb, God made Jesus in flesh. Surely God said, "It is good."

 His head crowned, and Mary felt it sear hot ice when the King of kings was born. 

 His head was crowned, and the crowning seared hot and pain chills goosebumped down His body and the King of the Jews was crucified. 

 When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, did it feel like a knife twisting when Satan wielded the sword of the Spirit, that sharp word of God, against Him? 

 "You were touched, but not conquered." I see this. 

 "It's impossible, isn't it," I ask, "to be conquered by evil when sheltered in Your depths?"

 "Make Me your shelter; no evil will conquer you," He answers. "No plague will come near your home," He continues from Psalm Ninety-One because that's the conversation we're having.

 I have to think that God is a realist. He sees real and His answers to reality aren't "There, there, chin up; it'll be alright" accompanied by a pat on the head kind of answers. No, His answers are one-hundred percent kind of answers.

 "I have made You my home; but  I'm still bobbing a bit on the surface of the depths" I say this because really, He is so big that I wonder if I've stepped much past the front door of Him.

 "You entered my gates with thanksgiving in your heart, when you were most grieved," He reminds me of how I've been making Him my home, and we pick up the Psalm Ninety-One conversation again. 

 "I chose." I did. I chose because sometimes the heart can't take one more flogging. 

 "The flogged either fight or forgive," and the One who forgave from the cross knows this best. 

 "I entered Your courts with praise," I continue His line of thought. And I did praise. I do praise. Isn't forgiveness to praise what His gates are to His courts? 

 "Enter forgiveness and step into praise," He puts it together for me, and I realize something. I'm not standing just right inside the front door anymore.

Is He smiling? Because I am. It's a happy realization. "God?"

 "Yeah?" His voice is real low. He shares the happy quiet with me alone.

 "I used to be plagued by nighttime fears and noonday destruction. I used to stub the toes of my soul till it throbbed. And I used to feel snake bitten and prowled," I talk to Him  right off the Psalm Ninety-One scripture page I'm on. "I used to but, God?"

 "Yeah?" He's reading His word over my shoulder.

 "I don't anymore! I've chosen; I choose even now and I will say of You, 'He is my refuge, my fortress, my God, my dwelling place, my home.'"

 "No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling." I don't understand everything He says, but the further I move beyond the front door of Him, and the deeper I plumb the depths with questions that bob at the surface, the more I understand. 

 Are His eyes moist with joy? Because mine are. 

 "You are my dwelling. No evil shall befall me" I get this part. There's a lion who still prowls, and a serpent who still tries to bite venomous, but I'm not felled anymore. Not be-fallen. Because I've made Him my home and I'm getting settled in. oh, I've brought some baggage with me that I don't need, but that's getting sorted out. 

 "God?" I'm ready to ask, "What about the 'Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling' part; but something happens. He speaks!

 "Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling, for I shall give My angels charge over you;" says He. 

 And my complaint, "What on earth are You talking about" leaves me because, truthfully, I am plagued with this and that but my dwelling is in my God; and though my outer body is wasting away all mortal, my inner being is being renewed day by day and I am more in earnest about what He says than about what I think I see, and the more earnest I am, the clearer I see what in heaven's name on earth He's talking about; and yeah this is a run-on sentence because my earnestness doesn't know what a period is.

 "Make Me your home." I hear what He's saying. I'm making the adjustments I need to make to settle in. It's earth-bound reality, heaven-bound hope, for the likes of me who digs through holy word with hands of clay. 

 Evil flogged Him to the bone, but did not fell Him. His angels were given charge over Him, and His own love befell Him. And fell on me. And His love fells me, not death or grave or hell. 

 I fall into His love and His love is the wind at my back. 

 
"Can you see the wind?" He helps me find words for my hope.

 "No," I can't see the wind. "But I remember," I begin.

 "Do you remember," our speech overlaps and we yield together, "You first!"

 "The wind? When I was a little girl?" I know what He's reminding me of.

 "At Portage Glacier," He affirms.

 I exclaim remembrance, "I haven't thought of that in years!"

 Portage Glacier. We went to Portage Glacier when I was but a sliver of a girl with dark hair and toothless gappy smile and sometimes the wind was so strong I could lay back on it in defiance of gravity.

 "I am the wind at your back. Lean like that onto Me," my wild Shelter answers; and "portage" means "the cost of carrying." 

 The lyrics, "I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon the cross," comes to mind as I lean on Him. I can't see Him, but to me He's the wild steady Alaska wind stronger than gravity,

 

"When you make the Most High your portage no plague will come near your home." It's how I read Psalm 91:9-10.

 I would read later, in Psalm Twenty-Six, "Lord, I have loved the habitation of Your house."

 And I would write in the margin, "I love living in Your house, wild Shelter."

 

 written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

 

 

 

 

Just Doing a Little Lent

Just Doing a Little Lent

 

The Lord is my dwelling place; I'm just visiting this world. 

He is my home; I'm just passing through this wasteland. 

He clothes me in His righteousness; I'm just borrowing this skin. 

He upholds me; I'm just lent this skeleton. 

He is my strength; I'm just doing some temporary lifting.

He is my redemption; I'm just redeeming time these days.

He is my eternal life; I'm just living one day at a time. 

He is my holiness. 

"May I be holy, as You are holy." 

All I Need to Hold

Well, I hold some things in a grip;

Turns out, they hold me! I admit.

So, I extend my tightened fist,

Willing, nervous, I take the risk;

He reaches for my hands with His,

Kisses each finger with holy lips;

He searches my eyes, and I close my own,

"May I," He pleads, "unfold your palms?"

I meet His eyes and nod consent,

He loosens my fingers stiff and bent.

I look to see what I held there,

"Lord!" I say, "My palms are bare!"

"All you need to hold is this;"

He smiles and places my hand onto His.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

How Could You Do This?

Pisteuo! The Devotional

Supplement to Chapter 6

"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, from Isaiah 53:10, is the hardest verse in the Bible for me to read. 

"How could You? How can this be true?" I face the words; because I don't understand God at all sometimes. I think I know Him, and then I read something like this and it doesn't fit and I don't want it to fit because it's flat up, palms out jolting. It is. 

But who am I to bleat "How could You?" when He's presenting Himself with no pretense right there in the words written across the thin page and hoping my heart will begin to feel like the parchment it is? 

I'm sheep. Just sheep with a sheepskin heart all parchment. And parchment is sheep skin. It's tough and strong, and prepared so that it may be written on and maybe it's woolly nappy of me to ask, but really, "How is it true that it pleased You to bruise Him?" 

I ask it and risk hearing His answer. I want to hear what He says; I do. But I'm also afraid to ask, because what if there's a part of Him that I really don't like? I want desperately to like Him. Not just love Him because He's God and my Father and all, but to like Him. 

So why couldn't the verse say something like, "The Father took no pleasure in bruising His Son; no pleasure in putting Him to grief"? It'd be a more likable thing to read about Father. It would, but then I'd have a tissue thin heart for easy things to be written on and maybe it's because I am as a sheep that anything less than a parchment heart wouldn't be hardy enough. Or satisfying. 

Paper hearts tear apart easily and tears dissolve them. But a sheep heart? Cry all over parchment, and it'll absorb and expand. So I have one because God knows I bleat out the tears sometimes and I need a heart that won't fall apart for it. Seems to me that God would rather my heart be strengthened by the tears; would rather my heart expand when it's soaked so that what He writes on it is magnified in the expansion and not dissolved. 

Balloons

Perplexed, uncertain, kind of nervous, I ask, "How could it have pleased You to bruise Your Son?" 

The question hangs out there a thick beat. 

I read the words again. I read the next verses. 

He answers. "I made His soul an offering for sin, but not without His agreement. I didn't force my will on Him, rather He and I share the same Spirit and Our Spirit brought Our desire together."

Yeah, I'm glad I'm a sheep with parchment for a heart because I'm hanging onto His words and can't breath right now anticipating what He's going to say next.

"Together We desired to give Our Spirit to the sons of men, the daughters of women, to unite them in shared desire to build their families and Our Kingdom." He says it without batting an eye as if this answer has everything obvious to do with my question.

"Say what?" I turn pages to Hebrews chapter ten because that's been written on this parchment heart, too. "Then He said, 'Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.'" 

God and Son of God shared His will; and His soul was made an offering for sin. 

I absorb this. My heart expands. His word is scripted on this thin-as-tissue page in front of me and on this parchment heart inside of me. I soak it up. My heart grows larger, and like that His word is magnified till I must ask about a mystery that's growing large too. "Isn't it the husband's will to give his name? The father's desire that his name be given to his children's children? Isn't the father pleased to see his days be prolonged through his seed?"

"He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days;" His answer takes me back to Isaiah 35:10 and we speak to one another like this. Hebrews and Isaiah.

I don't know the mystery of the relationship between the Father and Son as it models the husband and wife relationship as well as the parent to child and child to parent relationship. But it's consistent that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relationship be the model for all relationships.

I think out loud to God, "It doesn't please a good father to bruise his son; or a good husband to bring grief to his wife. It doesn't. Yet, a father is pleased when a son bears his good name and labors to see the children his father adopted prosper the name."

"And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand," He responds as verse ten continues. It's all there. We just haven't had this conversation before.

I take it further; "What about the pleasure when a wife bears down and births her husband's seed?"

"He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied." The Lord continues line by line this conversation that's already been scripted on this page spread out flat open on the bedspread where I'm kneeling. 

"What about the desire uniting a husband and wife? Is it like the Holy spirit uniting You and Your Son, and Your Son and His Bride?" It is, somehow. It's mysterious, but I know it is. 

And a shared holy desire transcends the pain required to see the desire prosper. For it to be satisfied.

So I read Isaiah 35:10-11 differently now than I read it before this conversation. "Yet it pleased the Father to bruise His Son. He has put His Son to grief. When the Father makes His Son's soul an offering for sin, He shall see His Father's seed and the Son's days shall be prolonged through the Father's seed. His days shall be prolonged, lengthened beyond His years on earth, through the seed that carries the name of the Father. And this prosperity given, placed in the hand of His Son, is pleasing to the Father. The Son shall see the labor of His soul; and the Father shall see the labor of His soul, the joint labor of their souls united in Spirit, and be satisfied. By the Son's knowledge many shall be justified. Many shall bear His Father's name and character, for the Son shall bear their iniquities."

My heart pours out His word like this because the parchment is swollen and God's word is magnified in the delivery.

Jesus assures, "I will not leave you as orphans. I will send the Holy Spirit to you."

I'm slow, considering how many times I've read these words. All I can say is that reading scripture isn't the same thing as having a conversation with the Author of it.

Well of course now it's obvious. Now that I get it. An orphan is alone, left in this world.

"You will not be orphaned," Jesus told His disciples before He went back home; and He speaks only what the Father has already spoken. He says so.

I'm absorbing this. My heart expands, and it's like seeing what words were written small on a deflated balloon grow, one heart-beat, one lung full, one breath at a time until the balloon is expanded full and the writing is made big enough to read. The words are magnified in the expansion. That's how I see it. Only my heart isn't rubber. And it's not a paper balloon that can't expand or absorb anything without disintegration. No. My heart is like parchment. It has to be. Anything less isn't fit to magnify God's word.

"Your heart, Jesus." An old truth is looking kinda new and taking my breath in sharp. "Your heart did burst. It did burst, on the cross, magnifying the Father's word."

I absorb this, too, and then say it again larger, "Your heart burst in the sacrifice You came to be."

"The Father and I are united." He's telling me that He does nothing on His own, and neither will those children of the Father, siblings of the begotten first-born Son who labored out physically as His Spirit panted to deliver children to the Father and siblings for Himself and His body for us that we might be His body. It's beyond me.

"You are mysterious. Y'all are a mysterious united few." The mystery-the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mystery-isn't really getting solved in my heart, but that's okay because my heart is getting bigger. And isn't my heart more about magnifying God than about solving the mystery of Him? It is.

Unity

"You will not be orphaned. I will send to you the Holy Spirit. Do as I have done, only this. Do only as the Father has commanded." What He says sounds daunting.

"It does, Lord. It does sound daunting." My sheepskin heart wavers out "Baa."

"Just as the Father and I are united in Spirit and in will, so you, too." He assures the likes of me with the tenderness of a sheep lover.

I absorb and somehow the bigger His word becomes in my heart, the less daunting it is to do His command. I want to do His command. It's in me, and getting larger in me, to do His command.

"I'm not orphaned." The statement rolls around the surface of my heart and soaks slow into the parchment. "I'm not alone."

"My Spirit is on you." He breaths a lung full and my heart expands. "You will carry forth the Father's name and your days will be prolonged through your spiritual children." He says it so true and plain I can't doubt it.

"I'll labor for this, Lord," I have an inkling what I'm getting into when I say this. "I'm willing to be bruised in the labor." 

I can say it because I have a parchment heart that has expanded like a balloon filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit and that magnifies the Word of God written on it. 

And I can say it because I've been bruised laboring to deliver four flesh and blood children of a united will with my husband to deliver his seed. 

And I can say it because it's been said of the One I follow, "He shall see His seed;" and "He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied."

"It pleased You to bruise Your Son." I can say it now. It's less foreign sounding every time I speak it. The words are written on the parchment that is my heart and I wonder, did the bruised Son have the greater part of the Father's pleasure? Maybe, because there's a strange pleasure when pain and grief are made right by a greater pleasure. The bruised Son proved it.

"I magnify You, God. I magnify Your word made big in my heart this morning." 

My heart is forever expanded. 

The hardest verse for me in the Bible, the verse that made me wince and just cringe out, "No! It can't be that!"is now a strange pleasure that's okay to feel.

It's okay. 

It's written.

The Father is pleased. The Son bore my iniquities; and is satisfied. 

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

I Call It "Clamudirt"

The old stepping stones trudge through soggy leaves and snow melt. They mark the way between shrubs and once upon a time I was going to  place a garden bench there. I never did. Now the shrubs are large; there isn't room for a bench, and these old stones have lain gardenbed-ridden for so long that the earth sags beneath them like an ancient mattress.

"You know," I begin, "I've got aged stones on a ancient path leading nowhere and," I tilt my head toward the leaf bags lined up all tough and stuffed with soggy leaves and, well, with the remains of rose canes gone wild. I fold my arms around my middle. God knows what I'm nodding toward. He knows the story.

"Yep," He nods back, "you've got that going on out here, too."

"And You heard," I squint tears back because too many have fallen this morning, "You heard, what was said about me. To me."

He squints back, because He did hear and He knows it hurt.

"Is it true? What was said, is it still true?" I stepped on toes this morning. I didn't mean to. I really didn't mean to. I meant to for my heart to be heard . It wasn't. It was exposed and thought I wore armor, not egg shell. I thought I'd buckled on the boots of gospel truth and true peace and I don't recall taking them off.  "Is there still shell around my heart?" I don't want there to be. Don't want others to feel they have to tip-toe around me lest I break and they're crunching egg shell beneath their feet.

"I know it used to be true." It was. "But, Lord, is it still true?" I'm standing on this stone wondering if I left a heap of broken egg shell where I tried not to cry, but did.

He doesn't answer my question. "Let's redirect this stone pathway."

"I'll go get my gloves."

The stones are wedged by time and by this soil I call "clamudirt." Clay-mud-dirt, pronounced a lot like "cluttered."

I pry the stone up just enough to see if there's a snake or recluse living there. I've disturbed them before and yeah, I check because I don't trust life on a path going nowhere. It's a cluttered mix of once upon a time plans that don't happen because time goes on and other things happen, and shrubs grow up, and eggs shells crack, and leaves get raked into dry piles and then get snowed on before they get bagged.

And there's more. I am branch grafted into the holy root; and I'm clay, and somehow the holy grows right out of me and somehow I branch out of the holy, and may I not deceive myself.

May I bear Spirit fruit from holy root no matter what my soul feels when life prunes hard, because soul fruit will go rebel. It'll look all spiritual blossom and belief, but the proof is in the pruning and I need a mess of grace when I try to live out of the name I was grafted into.

Walkway and snake, rose and thorn, armor and egg shell, branch and clay.

I call it clamudirt.

"This pathway was going to lead to a quiet bench," I heft the stone, brace it against my waist and waddle a few steps to the right. "Here?" I ask because I don't know where to begin a new walkway.

"A little to your left. Now back up. There!" He knows where to place the first stone. Smack in the middle of clamudirt. Well, aren't first steps like this sometimes? Messy beauty and nervous hope?

The ground is gooey enough to raze it with the stone itself and I'm saved a trip back to the garage to find the shovel.

My arms strain and my neck sinews strain. I muscle goo till it piles a few inches on all four sides of the square stone. I'm bearing the weight, pushing out a footprint, and "You know, Lord," I step back to admire the first step forward, "I think I've labored like this before."

"Hmm," He knows I have. I've pushed four pairs of feet out of this bit of clamudirt that I am. And they've made footprints and pathways across this very yard, in this garden they helped plant, and they've left indelible marks on the carpet and on me.

"Let's go get another stone from that old path," He's intent on this and I'm kind of wandering down memory lane.

Gardener

I didn't plan on laying out a new walkway this morning. I'm not dressed for it. I didn't expect to do more than bag damp leaves heavy with snow melt. My blue flip-flops are sogged and my bare toes are mud caked. And does my soul have fingernails? It does. I know it does because I've dug them in and hung by them before. I've had to do this. I've hung by soul-nails onto the Life for dear life, but today I dig through cluttered life. I dig up the old walkway and lay down a new one.

Dirt gets under the fingernails, gloves or not, because that's what happens when the way of heaven above is done on this earth. And we, God and I, are laying out a new walkway that goes somewhere.

He tells me where to place the next stone, and I deliver one stone at a time into this big stone called Earth.

"Where are we going?" I really don't know exactly. And I don't know if I have enough old stones to get there. "Are we going to run out?" I lean back and hug the fifth stone against me because it's heavy in tired arms.

"Okay. Now place this one right there." He's still not answering my questions. "Now give it a nudge." We're turning a corner. "Nudge it more to the riiight," He leans to the right because He's feeling it while I make the adjustment. "Perfect!"

I can see where this path is going and I'm intimidated. "It's going to the barren place, Lord, and I don't know how to fill it in." I miss the glory days when there were enough hours of sunlight and the roses grew into the names they were given at the grafting-American Beauty, Joseph's Coat, and Pinata.

I kneel on this turning stone and pack it into the ground. I'm quiet, but my soul isn't, because I was nudged kind of hard enough to press out tears where egg shells fell this morning. And really I shed a few more out here just all clamudirt. Yet God is out here, too, and He shows me my path.

He shows me my path.

"Go your own way, and loose who you are; go nowhere, and lose direction. But go My way, and find yourself; go where I go, and find your way."

My soul quiets, hums, as this realizations settles in and I remember an old church camp song. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." I hum it.

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." I sing the words.

"When I feel afraid, and think I've lost my way, still, You're right there beside me," I look at the barren place, rise to my feet and hum is anthem declared, "Nothing will I fear as long as You are near," and I feel His presence solid as the stone beneath my feet and rounding a bend.

"We're going somewhere!" I'm not intimidated anymore. I still don't know what's going to fill the bare place, but I'm not intimidated by it and this old camp song is the word of God. I retrieve my iPhone from the top of a leaf bag and google the song. It's from Psalm 119, and His word is heaven on earth just so dirt-under-the-fingernails wise to me. "Let's go get another stone from the old path!"

I lay the last stone. The walkway ends where the barren begins as if it had been drawn up in a garden plan. Maybe it was. "Now what?" I ask.

"Let's go get that bright blue raised garden bed. And the red plastic chairs from the patio. And," He continues but I catch His enthusiasm and interrupt.

"Oh! And the chiminea! We can put that in the middle of those stumps where the ground is flat bare!"

"Hmm," His eyes are lit warm as if the chiminea is burning pecan wood and we're roasting marshmallows around it singing church camp songs.

"Would it be ridiculous to place the old kitchen chairs beneath the magnolia tree?" I'm getting carried away. "I know. The chairs are padded, and the wood is weak and the backs are cracked, but, still?"

"Still," He picks up where I leave off, "they would be beautiful there! And your motto for them always been, 'Let's get as much mileage out of these as we can before they break.'"

"Haha! True!" And now that I'm fifty and freely using the wedding china for hamburgers, "Let's get as much mileage out of life as we can before I break" is motto!

Red Chairs

We do it. We fill the barren place with colorful chairs and pots to be filled with flowers. We string up from peach tree branches solar lit mason jars that store up the hours of sun too short for roses but long enough for firefly lighting.

We hang wind chimes that sing and a hummingbird feeder because we invite life.

And the fire of the chiminea, the gathering place where marshmallows will be roasted and songs sung and where laughter will just laugh is in the center of the bare place; in the center of the rose stumps I burned to ashen knobs. We placed large flat stones beside them and will paint the word "believe" on one of them, "trust" on the next, and "hope" on the third because to believe and to trust is to have faith enough to never loose hope no matter what. This is my life word, pisteuo, defined. I've written books about it and I try to live it every day because, live pisteuo and life is full.

"It's not bare anymore; not this barren place and not life," I put words to my thoughts.

"I am the resurrection and the life." He spoke these words when Lazarus died and his absence was a bare place in his sisters' every day lives and their hearts shattered like egg shells. And Jesus' too. His heart shattered because their's did. He wept. They wept. Then Jesus showed them the meaning of who He is.

"Take the stone away," He said. I hear it differently now as I sit on the red chair and listen to wind chime song. I hear it, "Let's redirect this pathway."

They lifted the stone away and Lazarus was raised from the dead. "Lazarus, come forth!" Jesus said it strong. "And he who died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Loose him, and let him go. (John 11:44)."

"I've come to give beauty for ashes." He speaks Isaiah 63 to me.

"I've come to heal the brokenhearted." Is He referring to the egg shells from this morning?

"I've come to proclaim liberty." Is He reminding me that I'm not who I used to be?

He says such things and it's like spreading grass seed over a lifetime of clamudirt.


written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

Bless This Mess, I'm Not the One Who Made It!

PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart
Supplement to Chapter 5

Fallen leaves are a messy lot. Not the gussied up kind, flouncing fall colors and spinning through the air like little girls showing off their newest skirt till they collapse to the ground in a dizzy heap of laughter. No, not that kind. But the kind that are half melted on the patio, brown mush because it rained-sleeted-snowed on them and I can't rake them or sweep them because they'd just smear like mud. There's the fall, and there's fallen but, "Bless this mess, I'm not the one who made it!"

I try to keep it neat and organized; try to keep it together. Life, that is. And my kitchen. And the laundry room. And, uh, my closet. Well okay, and the entryway by the front door where I've placed a revolving shoe rack but the only shoes on it are the shoes that rarely see daylight or feel the ground beneath the sole or hug feet that'll take them for a walk. The other shoes gather at the foot of the stairs to gab about where they've been and what they've stepped in, and happily, they generally keep it to the wood floor.

Yeah, life happens and sometimes its real pretty and sometimes it's not.

Sometimes the daffodils bloom and never get snowed on because spring is organized.

Sometimes kitchen chairs break and the new chairs are half-way out of the boxes, half assembled, and half stacked between the dining room and the kitchen table.

Sometimes the blender lid pops off because I forget the law of heat expansion, or whatever it's called, that guarantees hot liquid will expand and when it's blending boiled kale, leeks, and potatoes on the puree setting it'll explode and soup preparations will stop because I'm standing on the kitchen counter wiping green from the ceiling and on down the cupboards while yellow therapy dog cleans the floor.

Thing is, life can't be contained any more than soup in a blender, though it's big business in this world of stuff to try. The Container Store comes to mind. And the coupons I get in the mail offering to professionally organize my closets. Only, the stuff I'd need to purchase to organize my stuff just would be more to stuff behind closet doors. And I'd really like to keep the doors. They're the best part of my closet. I get to close them; and frankly, I have other closet doors I like to keep shut because there's stuff behind them that I don't want to sort out. But somethings can't be shut in or shut out and kept together at the same time. They just can't. I've tried and all that happens is I get beaned by a skeleton.

Yeah, skeletons in the closet. Leave them there too long and they start rattling. I've heard my thoughts rattle. My insides can rattle till, well, the lid pops off and I'm cleaning up after my attitude. My nerves, too. They can rattle till I'm half-way contained, half-way assembled, half stacked between two places and the tipping point.

Yet, here's something. "Prophesy," God says, "to these bones, and say to them, 'O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord' (Ezekiel 37:6)."

Hear the word of the Lord. Hear the truth. Speak the truth. That's what it means to prophecy.

Prophecy the truth to skeletons and guess what? They stop rattling.

Speak God's word to dry bones, and they won't fit in the closet places anymore.

Prophecy the breath of life to them, and their first words will be words of life.

And here's something else. Somehow God's sovereignty is messy.

I think I make messes? Ha! My messes are spilt milk compared to the messes God makes. No, I don't make messes worth much more than a paper towel.

He makes messes; and I can't take the credit for messes anymore than I can take credit for the clean up. Yeah, I mess up; but  that's not the same thing as making messes. It's not. It's not, because didn't God make the mess of fallen-ness? Didn't God make the mess of sin? And didn't God know that I'd mess up and have skeletons rattling in my closet for these very reasons?

Maybe. May be that He did; because it may be that when I mess up He gets to spit-shine me and stand back with His mighty arms folded across His massive chest like Mr. Clean beaming on the detergent bottle.

Dafodiles

Connecting with God's Heart-

-Somehow He puts me together when I'm in pieces
-Somehow all things fit together in Him
-I'll mess up and that's okay because somehow it's part of His sovereignty
-I practicing prophecy and I'm not scared of skeletons

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig