Available: Rocks and Precious Gems

In Pilgrims Progress, Christian is weighed down by a burden. He is broke. He is bent double under his load. You just know, he's about to crack.

Then, I picture my small rock collector, happily collecting rocks and gems as fast as he can. He too is carrying a lot and weighed down. He also bends under the weight, but with items of worth, and we can't find enough bags to haul them all home. They are not a burden to him. I need to live the message my rock hound is displaying.

In Christ, I can and want to collect rocks. I take the hard rocks of my life, the hard people, the hard places, the hard trials and not only am I willing to collect them, I start treating them like treasure.

In Pilgrim's Progess, Christian's heavy burden of sin is taken from him at the cross of Christ. Oh, the power of grace! In Christ, many of my rocks, struggles, and challenges have become a sweet victory of peace, joy and hope. I am healed. Yet, in Christ, I am not promised a life without trials. That same grace, that took Christian's burden, allows me to continue to shoulder burdens. For some burdens may never be removed. 

 The Apostle Paul struggled with a life long burden. As long as we are on earth, we will struggle with trials and burdens. The trail will contain rocks we trip over. Rocks that we and others add to our knapsack. We do however have the opportunity to be transformed by these rocks.

I can choose to see them not as rocks, but as precious gems. I can choose to stay on the trail. I want to live a story worth telling. I don't really want to collect rocks. But as they jostle in my knapsack, they become polished and precious gems. Treasure. I do want treasure. 

* Pictures from Wikipedia and Squidoo

Desert Seeing

 Near Warner Peak View Point, Hart Mountain, Oregon

There are some things we see and experience only in a desert.

Mice in your warm engine block after a cold desert night. Ironically, you are listening to Bless This Mouse. Mom screams. Kids crack up.

Then there are the rocks. They are everywhere. I am constantly trying to get around them, avoid them in my life. I want a story with no rocks. No conflict. Yet, the rocks of conflict may hold precious gems, if I will choose to mine them, instead of tossing them aside, dismissing them as quickly as possible.  

He sees beauty in rocks. Long before others see a precious gem, he sees the hidden treasure. He doesn't have to polish a rock to see it shine.

Long Lake Petroglyph Wall, Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge, Oregon

The desert holds life. Wild bunnies and wild burros, cool swimming holes, and tad poles that nibble on you. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

There is treasure in the desert. In the dry and hot, we sweat out the profane, mundane, all that we disdain.

Protected under the Rock.
Long Lake, Oregon 

Virgin Valley Springs Campground, Nevada

In the desert, we thirst for what really matters. Living water.

Isaiah 54
 Spread Out, Think Big
^1-6 "Sing, barren woman, who has never had a baby.
   Fill the air with song, you who've never experienced childbirth!
You're ending up with far more children
   than all those childbearing women." God says so!
"Clear lots of ground for your tents!
   Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big!
Use plenty of rope,
   drive the tent pegs deep.
You're going to need lots of elbow room
   for your growing family.
You're going to take over whole nations;
   you're going to resettle abandoned cities.
Don't be afraid—you're not going to be embarrassed.
   Don't hold back—you're not going to come up short.
You'll forget all about the humiliations of your youth,
   and the indignities of being a widow will fade from memory.
For your Maker is your bridegroom,
   his name, God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
Your Redeemer is The Holy of Israel,
   known as God of the whole earth.
You were like an abandoned wife, devastated with grief,
   and God welcomed you back,
Like a woman married young
   and then left," says your God.

 ^7-8Your Redeemer God says:
   "I left you, but only for a moment.
   Now, with enormous compassion, I'm bringing you back.
In an outburst of anger I turned my back on you—
   but only for a moment.
It's with lasting love
   that I'm tenderly caring for you.
 ^9-10"This exile is just like the days of Noah for me:
   I promised then that the waters of Noah
   would never again flood the earth.
I'm promising now no more anger,
   no more dressing you down.
For even if the mountains walk away
   and the hills fall to pieces,
My love won't walk away from you,
   my covenant commitment of peace won't fall apart."
   The God who has compassion on you says so.
 ^11-17"Afflicted city, storm-battered, unpitied:
   I'm about to rebuild you with stones of turquoise,
Lay your foundations with sapphires,
   construct your towers with rubies,
Your gates with jewels,
   and all your walls with precious stones.
All your children will have God for their teacher—
   what a mentor for your children!
You'll be built solid, grounded in righteousness,
   far from any trouble—nothing to fear!
   far from terror—it won't even come close!
If anyone attacks you,
   don't for a moment suppose that I sent them,
And if any should attack,
   nothing will come of it.
I create the blacksmith
   who fires up his forge
   and makes a weapon designed to kill.
I also create the destroyer—
   but no weapon that can hurt you has ever been forged.
Any accuser who takes you to court
   will be dismissed as a liar.
This is what God's servants can expect.
   I'll see to it that everything works out for the best."
         God's Decree.

Bookends: Africa Trek 1

 Antelope in the Hart Mountain Refuge, Oregon

My head is spinning Africa. I've yearned to know more. Because I can? Because I should? Read Africa Trek 1 by Alexandre and Sonia Poussin. It will change everything you know and think about Africa. An amazing journey. An amazing story.

Favorite excerpts...

Everything is simpler with all hands in the soil.

We are thinking of the thirst of an entire people.

We are all walking towards the light. When you reach the summit, keep climbing.

Sorcery, jealousies, acts of sabotage: the success of an individual is forbidden. He has no right to succeed. It's everyone or no one.

To be a missionary is not to disembark with a brand new catechism in your suitcase and hit people over the head to try and hammer it in forcibly. To be a missionary is to find the work of God in every man, in every culture, and to inhabit, inculturate that spirituality with the evangelical message of the Good News.

How many of these admirable women will we come across, these heavy lifters who bear loads, households, offspring, and Africa in their arms?

You are always in the middle of a landscape you are crossing! You think you see it? All you are doing is moving the center, and the landscape never ceases to change...

They aren't a thousand young people singing together, but a single body expressing itself with a thousand hearty vocal chords. A lesson in harmony and unity. No complexes, no individualism, no self-aggrandizement or self-obsession among the Basothos. The length of the mass depends on the enthusiasm of the young people; sometimes it last three hours and we can't manage to stop them singing....Then there are long discussions about life, faith, travel, the world, Christians around the world. And what surprises me most is that these girls have a shameless faith, free, without complexes, pure and simple, natural. And it becomes obvious to me how hard people are on the believers of Europe. Systematically derided. Constantly humiliated. To what extent they hide their faith and elicit sarcastic remarks. Who has not felt queasy getting into a conversation on this taboo subject, revealing one's candid thoughts? Who has not been ashamed to say there was maybe something rather than nothing? What fine man has not been sacrificed at least once, swearing to himself he will not be caught again on the altar of ambient cynicism and skepticism and that anti-clericalism and atheism fashionable ideas. Well, the glacial wind of the kingdom of sorrow and emptiness is swept away by the shining faces of these eager girls. Let them believe! And let me doubt! Who ever said that faith was certainty? And happiness, those who are born into it, well nourished, spoiled, they find that bourgeois, so they worry about their appearance and think themselves romantic when they are brooding, wise when they are sinister, happy when they are blasé.

Read this book. You may not be able to trek Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Mount Kilimanjaro, but you can follow the footsteps of man, learn their story. Our story. Go with them on their trek. Above a certain altitude, man cannot conceive bad thoughts.

As for me, Africa Trek ll, the journey from Kilimanjaro to the Sea of Galilee is next up on my list.

Bookends: Bless This Mouse

I must share our latest listen out loud, laugh out loud. Lois Lowry's heart warming Bless This Mouse is a sure winner. Here's hoping to more books about Hildegarde and the mice of St. Bart's. Giggles galore.

From Amazon:

A church mouse is no ordinary mouse, and Hildegarde—the Mouse Mistress of Saint Bartholemew’s—is no ordinary mouse leader. It falls to her to keep all the church mice safe and out of sight.

But when a few parishioners report mouse sightings, Hildegarde and the rest of the church mice must face a most dreadful consequence: the Great X. To complicate things, a ceremony called the Blessing of the Animals is fast approaching. Saint Bartholemew’s will soon be filled with pets . . . including cats!

Oh, dear. Within the stately stone walls of the church, life is not as serene or safe as one might think. It will take the courage and patience of a—well, of a saint—to keep this scampering, squeaking tribe of Hildegarde’s intact.

Up, Over and Around

We've been seeing new things. More, very soon....

Weekend Wanderings

And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be exalted. 

Isaiah 49:11

God's chosen path always feels like a detour to me, and the hardest way to summit the peak. Am I running circles around the base? Where is progress?

Are you in a direct ascent to the top and struggling for oxygen? Are you grasping for a foot hold? The mountain road to God is up. There are sites to behold, and they are only possible with ascent. Keep going. He's headed down the mountain to you, in the person of Jesus Christ. He descended that we might ascend.