Childlike praise

When we are as weak as infants, He makes our childlike praise a stronghold against the enemy. By resting peacefully in our Lord, He powerfully silences the lies and accusations of the foe and the avenger. ~ Paraphrase of Psalm 8:2

Our effort is laying hold

Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness. -Martin Luther.

Just as a caretaker so joyfully bends to every cry, eager to respond, so the LORD bends near to his people and hears their cries. (Psalm 77:1, Matthew 23:37)

Stripped me of all my conditions

Stripped me of all my conditions

My love for you depends on my health: Being strong, able-bodied, with energy, without pain, able to sleep, migraine-free, cancer-free, able to have children...

My love for you hangs on my relationships: That my family would spend eternity with you, that you would open blind eyes, that you keep their mental abilities, physical abilities, their health, that you would save...

My love for you is conditional upon you answering my prayers: Answering my desire for a spouse, for a happy life, good vacations, good food and beer, a good job, good times, peaceful living...

Oh America, America, lukewarm and radiant
Look at your conditions for this Jesus, you make Him
make you great… Guaranteed life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
 

[That is not in the Bible]. 

What is in the Bible? 

Guaranteed prison cells, starvation, being hated, being sawn in two, wandering about in the skin of sheep and goats, destitution. 

Guaranteed that you will never be left or forsaken, inheritance where moth and rust do not destroy nor thieves can't break in and steal, a room/mansion in the Father's house. 

Oh Christine, Christine, wake up to the reality of this god you say you love
Oh I repent, I repent of these conditions I hold out for you,
They are there, and until they are challenged, until I am broken to surrendering, again. 

In your love, you break me.

Still, I pray. 
Please answer the pleas according to what is best. I will drink the cup.

I’ve made up my mind
and give it to you to keep,
because in my weakness it will breach.

You are a good keeper.

The Hand of the Name

Here are my reflections from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. In Hebrew, Yad means hand, and Shem means "The Name"- God's Name is too holy to speak.

I went through the museum covered in prayers, with a folded square of notebook paper and a pen. I went through mostly alone, seeking to hear what God wanted for me.

It is a heavy place, architecturally designed to be a looping confined maze with light only descending from the central aisle. It holds possessions and stories of victims of one of the most gruesome and horrific systematic genocides in human history. And it is filled with Jews and Gentiles remembering, together, the children and the elderly reading plaques and watching screens and crying. I would recommend anyone to go there, and would pray for God to protect your emotions, too-- not to carry false burdens there, but repent and move forward because Messiah's work on Calvary truly atoned-- in particular, for this.
---
You are the Light of the World.
We remember their pain.
Fragments of Life stolen
and buried in the grave.
What was buried, ashes only remain.
--
"Death was a permanent guest" - The Emperor of Atlantis Opera (written by residents of a ghetto)
--
Purity and shame- images, propaganda, poisoning and defaming.
Shoved out, incriminated
Branded, forsaken.
Disease.
Starvation.
Shame.
Humiliation.
Destitution.
Poverty.
Racism.
Web of lies.
Secrecy.
Broken.
 --
"One nation, one Reich [Government], one leader!"
Hitler's claim resonates with our destiny-  that is the corruption, the heinousness. He held a particle of truth, that history would end with Messiah's bride under His perfect government and leadership. It is woven into the tapestry of the eternity in our hearts, and Hitler's vision [or Satan's behind] stabbed and mutilated it.
--
"Icy indifference" -Abraham Levite, 1945

The churches' folly; deception, rejection.
Not only murder, but abandonment. 
Lies from the pit, indoctrinated.
Blood, spit Gaul
oh, I wept to see the mighty fall.
The painful righteous branch uprooted,
undone,
polluted,
it was the devil himself,
deifying himself,
in claiming the lives of God's holy people.

"Thou didst love us and favor us." -Nathan Alerman
==
Justice
His sound
Rises
The stench of death
The confiscation of Life
Rights, and beauty.
Extinguishing hope.
Each train deporting the breath of God.
Each order shaping a tomb- shoveling the biggest grave pit in the world.
==
Jesus came, to set the captives free.
Yeshua died for the sin of you and me.
Jesus came to take away my tears.
Yeshua is the one who will bottle all my tears.
--
Equality of nakedness
Arbeit, arbeit, Frei to die, Tot
Free to deceive, destroy,
Shame, flee, you have no hold on me
The Words of Life
Have set me free
This I will remember!!
Justice spoke forever
on the tree and Mercy died for me.
---
Isaiah 56:5
I shall give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name

The Hall of Names
The Ascension and the Pit,
This is the wailing wall where we supplicate-
the cries go up, the tears captured in the pool below
You who see and know,
O Lord my God of Israel!
You hear and see and know!

I hear "holy, holy, holy"
I hear "You have not turned your back on the Jews" (even as they will walk backwards from the wailing wall, as to not turn their back on you)
I hear "worthy is the lamb who was slain"
---
Shalom, forever.
Under the shadow of your wings.

We end with music
"string" composed of the words of lament
and sorrow
and grief, unending-
ocean swelling, sinking, sounds.
Sounds.
Sounds, notes, resonate,
harmonize,
cry.
--
Copyright 2017 by Christine Yaeger

Is the mind a globe or a map?

The image of the sphere / concrete as much as limestone and sand are solid when mixed with water,
                                           holding together, molecularly

Cultivated in our minds / Polaroids from beyond, above, caricatures of continental outlines we see
                                            on walls and book covers, brands, perpetuating identity 

As a fixed, intractable reality / In our enlightenment, we have maps, parchments of assumptions and
                                                    provocations, boundaries to the eyes but what of the Spirits? 

Ignoring the distortion of an absent third dimension, we assent to the deformed, flat projection 

What of the tectonic shifts to come? When we will see lands crumble into the sea by god or man

What power does this mind map hold over us? What of the B.C. man, his calendar, his animal skins of empires and oceans, his mind's map 

What power does this mind globe hold? Can you find myself on a descending hierarchy,
nation-
            region-
                        state-
                                 county-
                                               city-
                                                       neighborhood?
Can I find yourself using the global positioning satellites ever eclipsing?
Is it comforting to find, locate, "X"? Does precision matter?
Is it false and ignorant or close-enough and necessary?

From this ground, a two mile radius until the drizzle of horizon overcomes, a fade into infinity, eternity, all the realm we do not see 

Enduring as seeing him who is invisible.

Staying inside of love

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation… and do not expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside of it.” Rainer Maria Rilke 

HT to Allison Fallon (http://allisonfallon.com/) who shared the quote in her blog post on finding love with a broken heart.

In community, we give and are given

"You think that you will be alone? Is that it? Ha! You will not rid yourself of us that easily. We will be ever at your side. Do not think the Most High makes his servants tread only lonely paths. His ways are more clearly seen with the help of others of like spirit. He has given us to you, as you have been given to us, that we might help each other."
-Stephen R. Lawhead, The Warlords of Nin from the Dragon King Triology