Itty-Bitty thought

I was viewing pics on facebook...came across my brother's site/soon to be sister-in-law's site and their past weekend. My dad flew up to Seattle so meet Leah. I was looking at the pictures and my thought was, 'when did my dad get that old?'

Underneath some comments were that my dad looks like the guy from House (the main doctor dude.) What are they smoking?! I don't see it at all. LOL.

However, there were several trippy pics.

I hope it's just a sign I'm tired....I mean I saw him at Christmas '08...can he really have changed so much? Ok, so that was nearly a year ago...still...

Itty Bitty blog over. Good Night world. (I.E. Stacy) ;)

Mini-Thoughts--who will go...Come Again?

Ok: time for an installment of random thoughts...
So I was listening to Isaiah 6 recently...and it occurred to me how unexpected God can be. This is not the first time I've thought this, nor will it be the last. ;) There are some constants in life besides death and taxes.

So, maybe my paradigm so clearly shows that I've been raised in the western hemisphere in the 20th-21st century...that yes, Hollywood and all the drama have permeated my perceptions and somewhat set my expectations for certain plots. But then...I think there are more than a few people that would fit this description, thus this blog.

However, let's see if you can see the picture I did. (And this will be a very loose translation, very much a paraphrase...but in true Hollywood stories, let us begin.)

There once was a man named Isaiah. One day shortly after the regent of the realm had died an angel came to him and gave him a vision. He stood before the very thrown of the Most High God. The temple was stunning, in fact, the very train of the King filled the entire temple. Other angels with 6 wings were hovering above the thrown, 2 wings covering the angels' feet, 2 covering their faces...and 2 wings kept the creatures airborne, and they proclaimed how sacred and holy this place was, how amazingly sovereign this King is/was. The very foundations he is standing on shake with the tremor of the King's voice. (Can't you just see the bright lights, the dazzling effects, the sheer immensity of creation before the thrown?) Isaiah feels the contrast deeply, in fact he's very conscientious of the fact he's tracked in some mud, some filth upon his person due to where he lives, who he lives alongside of, what he hears in the streets everyday, things that have crossed his lips and here he is sullying this place. He is definitely out-of-place among the riches, the grandeur, the sheer holiness of this place. So what happens? Does he get kicked out on his keister? Nope.

Instead an angel takes burning coal from the sacrificial altar with some tongs...and flies straight towards him. (I don't know about you, but I'd be thinking punishment...hell, pit fires...burning coals just can't be good? Right?) But we are wrong. The coal burns away all the impurities about our main character, this man in the midst of heaven's glories. Isaiah stands forgiven, absolved of all sins. He stands pure in a pure and holy place.

On the heels of this profound transformation the Lord puts forth a request to the room...'who will go, who will bear a message for me?' Isaiah is filled with a zeal, and practically jumps up shouting 'pick me, pick me, pick me....I'll go...' And here is where my perceptions and paradigms take over. On the crescendo of such an amazing message, and this request, I start to expect the message to be carried will be grand, will be on par with the place and the set up so far...grand temple, grand God, grand transformation...in the background in my head I can hear the producer saying 'cue theme music, let it swell...the hero of the story is to receive his holy quest....'

So what message does Isaiah sign up to carry?

Go and tell the people....


.....pregnant pause....

dramatic effects.....



' to keep on being fools....to keep pretending that they're paying attention....keep being insensitive idiots....blind, deaf, clueless fools! For what could they risk in letting go of their own self-righteous perceptions? Nothing but salvation, nothing but healing, nothing but comprehension.'

Now if it were me, and I have a habit when I'm drastically surprised of speaking before I think, I just know the next words out of my mouth to such a request would have been something along the lines of, "Say what?!! Come again?!!! You want me to go back and tell everyone I know what again? Surely I misheard...you seriously want me to go and tell them they're fools, idiots...etc, et al? Hunh? Now wait a minute..."

I feel somewhat assuaged in Isaiah's response. 'For how long?'

Yes...I too would have felt deflated. Here I am, before the thrown of God, ready to carry a message that will change people the way I've just been changed...and I've volunteered, ready and willing...for....well, this particular memo wasn't what I had in mind when 2 minutes ago I was full of awe, wonder, inspiration....

And the Lord basically tells him to keep repeating it until everything is in ruins.

Where I was prepared for a motivational speech I encounter a God who tells it like it is...who knows the nature of man...until we've run it into the ground, until we've tried absolutely everything we can think of by ourselves....then, we'll be ready to listen...to perhaps consider an idea we didn't come up with under the illusion of our own brilliance....

Wow...He certainly doesn't seem to pull any punches. And, yet.....well....you can't escape the fact that there at the end when we've completely and utterly destroyed things there was that small, tiny, little, bitty, tiny, detail of Him saying, 'when you're ready to listen there will be healing...restoration...salvation.....'

Oh. Ok. So it wasn't what I expected when the story first began to climax.

Another message I recently heard stuck a similar note...and so is worthy to be captured here.
The pastor giving this message...well really the point I'm relating was simply a sub-point within a grander message...but this really struck me.

So that verse many of us, know and quote..."Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28) The Pastor's point was this....do you realize what that really is saying? Cause if I were going to give you a time in my life where you really don't want to know me...well, that would be it---when I'm weary, and tired, and stressed, and burdened...when I'm worn down, worn out, and worn in...this would be the time to say, perhaps meet me next week. I'm not a nice person at that juncture. I'm not receptive, or patient, or anything but burned out. Yet, this is the time when God extends the invitation...come...come burned out, tired, stressed, worn out...when you're impatient, exhausted, moody, snappish, snippy, more willing to hit and ask questions later...

What do you do with a Lord like that? What do you do with a man like that? For those of us blessed enough...well, we may have one or two really close people in our lives who see that side of us....one or two people who accept us as-is, with all the walls down, they see us, accept us, cut us some slack, love us...hear us out, lift us up....listen...and sometimes know from that place that goes deeper than just an intellectual front, but from an experiential one....we call them friends. We call them best friends, or life-long friends, sister/brother of our hearts...

And this is the Lord, that loves you, that wants to know you...not superficially, not as an acquaintance, but as a best friend...a soul's companion...this is our Savior. Come. Be healed. Be purified. Come just as you are. When you are ready, I'll be waiting.

Shake it up--curious music box reflections

So every once and awhile it hits me that I should probably be cleaning up and storing the remnants of my life that are distinctly from childhood, or from my teen years. I’ve cleaned a lot of it, boxed some of it, but there’s still a shelf or two in my room that sometimes stares me in the face, mockingly at times for the simple sentimentality within that refuses to box up all of these little knick knacks, glaring at me that I truly am not the adult I pretend to be.

As a child I would have said I collected fragiles. As an adult I guess I would say I collect memories. I have several music boxes…or windup music apparatuses…some are in globes, one is a box, one is a piano, and one is in a doll. Tonight I took one down from the shelf, wound it up and let my thoughts unwind to the tune.

Truthfully I don’t like the globes so much, the water always seems to disappear over time and the thing in the center of the globe comes up, detaches…and the mystery of the music is hidden...but I cannot throw these away, the music and the memories attached mean more to me than my small annoyance at the globe itself and the unavoidable deterioration. I remember….my second music—let’s call them boxes, it’s easier. So, I remember my second music box very well. It’s a little silver piano, and there was once a lid, like a piano lid, which I’m sure I did box up since I used this box so many times the hinge that kept the piano lid attached has long since broke. Anyway, this piano was a favorite of mine because you could see the device that created this haunting song and I was fascinated by the mechanical simplicity of a few bars passing over bumps on a roller that produced a beautiful song. I would listen to this box for hours, and watch the rise and fall of the little arms under the piano's lid. The music, and the little piano are still a comfort to me, and the funny thing, I couldn’t tell you the name of the song. Since then I’ve received a few more music boxes…and one of these is from my Auntie AJ and is one of my favorite classical songs, Fur Elise. This is the one I took down tonight, wound up and unwound my thoughts from the busy day.

I bring this up because this globe, for it is a globe, has a floral bouquet in it with these glittery flecks. As I sat there, thinking nothing, just listening to the music, remembering the box, my Auntie, and how treasured I felt that my Auntie would purchase this box with one of my favorite songs I found my eyes captivated by the way the light from my lamp, and then candlelight, bounced off and played with the glittery flecks within. The light and the glittery flecks have this iridescent rainbow like interaction. It was beautiful. The flecks within danced and twinkled like fireflies or fairies, the music acting as gentle laughter, from this thoughts surfaced.

Before there was the promise from God to man in the form of rainbows were colors the same? Did the spray of waves in the sunlight have that all too brief moment where all colors existed in the blink of an eye? What did sunsets look like? How about diamonds, did they reflect/refract light like they do today? When God first showed Noah the sign of promise, His bow in the sky, did Noah understand how much the world had changed; did he see beauty or just the end of the rain? At one point did Noah or one of his grandchildren realize how different the world had become just in this simple, quiet array of light and colors? Did they marvel at it as the array of colors winked at them from water droplets, from waves, from the sky, from candlelight through glass, and all the many places these little bursts of color twinkle from? When you read it in the story, it’s just a sign, a reflection of a promise that never again will this world be flooded to the destruction of all life. Yet, there’s so much more in them, to them…beneath the surface, suspended between, hovering, displayed…

And one day, there will be more, more miracles, more changes, and an eternity for us to marvel, to dawning-ly understand the nuances behind the intricate simplicities of heaven, of God, of new life, of a love that surpasses all we know or ever will, of little exquisitenesses like music or twinkling rainbows and it will no longer matter if the awe comes from a child, an adult, or an angel. We will not have to consider packing it up, sucking it up, and trudging on. It won’t be just another day, one more day survived, or muddled through…it will be more…and laughter may be the music, and our memories the weave and shadow between the beautiful light of simple graces, tiny treasures...shake them up, sit back, unwind, relax, laugh, remember, marvel, wonder…

A promise
A hidden depth
A joy
--given to us
--see, remember, rest easy
--to treasure, prismatic paradigm shifts
new

...settle in

Point of No Return

Today I've been feeling sluggish, tired, under the weather and out of it. I limped through a little work but took a sick day instead. It's 7 o'clock and I feel like it's 4 am. But I was slowly reading a book awhile ago, and I do mean slowly.

And on page 407 it hit me, the point of no return. I wish there'd been a sign, as tired as I am I probably would have stopped. But, no, I went along reading on page 406, started to hit the end of the page...and I really should have seen it coming...I mean with the number of books I've read in my life...I really should have clued in.

Instead of careening right on through and flying off the cliff, but I passed it, the point of no return. I must have the end of the story now. 134 more pages, the last book in the trilogy...and my dear friends...I'm not sure I'm going to make it this time. It is a sad, sad thing, but like gravity a little inevitable that I will try...or rather, that I will continue falling through as many pages as I can so hopefully I can R.I.P.