Lent Day 2 ~ Spiritual Hunger

Luke 6: 21 Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.

As you know, or have an idea, that this is the Lent season, I deem it my spiritual renewal and I tend to get deep into thought. I hope you can all bear with me and my hope is that you, through reading my journey of renewal, will take a peek in the mirror and instead of condemning yourself, try and look into your mind, your heart, your soul. What you see is the true essence of you.

If you look into your eyes and see yourself as fat and ugly, no good, unworthy, unaccomplished or unappealing then you are full of doubts and fears not truth. You may even put on a false face as you embrace the world but know this, I SEE the real you. Even in your doctored persona I can see right through the veil and see all the negative energy seep through.

Don’t ask me how I see, all I know is that everyone emits an energy; a deeply rooted energy. Like the sun rising and moving across the sky, you might never actually SEE the sun move, but you KNOW it moved from one second to the next because it shows in the warmth of the rising to the setting. Humans emit much of the same energy. And if you are full of a negative energy it shows. You can’t mask energy no matter what you do.

Have you ever awakened in the morning and your stomach started churning inside, grumbling like a madhouse in there? You realize you’re hungry, so you eat; rumbling and churning gone, you then feel satisfied that you’ve eaten. You go about your day when around noon time, there it is again, the rumbling begging for more food.

Your body needs sustenance to keep you going. It feeds the energy inside you. You see where I’m going with this, don’t you? God is a lot like that, He wakes you in the morning, calls to you and you eat food instead of asking Him what He wants. You need to be filled but your not getting the fullness through food and can’t put your finger on those images you saw in the mirror. The ones you saw yourself in the morning? You know, the ones where you looked and saw fat, ugly, unworthy?

You might only know me through WORDS but do you see me as fat, ugly, unworthy? I hope not. I hope you see me as a jovial spirit, filled with love, happy-go-lucky kinda gal.

You probably wish you could smack the happy right off my face, don’t you? Well you can’t, why? Because it is the energy I emit and energy cannot be contained.

You might also assume that I have never experienced lethargy, depression, anxiety, sickness, anger or hunger? Well you have assumed wrong. I have suffered through the pains, been dragged about on limp legs, have cried in pain until I felt all the life in me leap out and go off into the unknown.

But wait, you don’t see that, do you? Well quite honestly it was through the saving Grace of God that I came through EVERY hardship, illness, every bout of depression and all self-doubt. How? I looked in the mirror one day, I looked in my eyes and didn’t see doubt and fear surface; I saw God looking back at me. Would that scare you straight? Seeing God looking right at you, THROUGH you?

I saw Him looking at me as HE sees me and not as I had seen myself. He saw His creation, perfect in His eyes for He makes no mistakes. If I saw ugly, He saw beauty. If I saw doubt, He saw faith. If I saw darkness, He saw Light! His Light and Son shining through me. The closer I looked the more and more I saw the same thing He saw! Great, now the tricky part is to carry that satiated energy throughout the day.

Depression looked bearable. Anxiety looked tolerable, illness looked manageable. The mirror looked less foggy when I saw through His eyes. HE was now the image I saw in the mirror every single day as I woke up. HE was the image I rested on through the night. HE was the strength in the mirror I would carry with me day after day, second by second. HE became the very heartbeat of my soul.

That hunger I felt was not for food after all, it was a Spiritual Hunger that my soul yearned for, craved for, would DIE for. A hunger that only God himself could fill. I am now a spirit-filled image that you see or read and only through the spirit that God gives each and every one of us will we begin to see the Light, the Truth, our Comforter and Holy Spirit in the mirror that we look in every day.

Next time you look in the mirror ask yourself a question, “What am I going to feed myself with today?” I can guarantee you’re spiritually starved and once you start feeding your soul, YOU too will see God in the mirror!

1 Cor. 16: 18 For they have refreshed my spirit and yours: therefore acknowledge ye them that are such

 

 

The Seed

Matt. 13: 23 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

The Seed

Word has come that I am missed

I sense the wonders rising.

Where did you go, what’s happening?

Are questions not surprising.

I need a break from all the chaos;

the crazy thoughts in my head.

I turn to Him the One who counts

My Lord, my living Bread.

I’m still here and searching

for all my soul might need.

He answers me in whispers;

my spirit’s a living seed.

I’m told that I’m a beacon

that people look to see.

The Word flowing from my lips;

the Light shining forth from me.

He’s cleansing me from inside

strengthening my ways.

Allowing me to filter

fallacy through the haze.

The Lord has lightened my burden;

for those all wanting to know.

He’s laid on my heart what to say

The message that I must show.

Job 4:4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.

Isolation

Pss.102: 7  I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

As you all know, or should if you read my blog often enough, I live out in the middle of nowhere. I am in a writers haven; a dream locale with an isolation factor that writers can only dream about living.

Sometimes it’s too isolated leaving me alone with my thoughts; dangerous by all means, my thoughts and me. You would have thought that three days with no internet I would have gotten a lot of writing done but no, didn’t write one thing! I was too worried about if I’d ever connect with the outside world again to want to write.

I live out here on a zillion acre (exaggeration) run down, closed down turkey ranch. To the north of me I have a neighbor who works nights and sleeps days. To the south of me, behind a huge ‘mill’ and shed, I have another neighbor that lives in a trailer. I never see any of them much but I know they’re there.

To the east of me I see a rolling cornfield (what did you expect, it’s Nebraska). In the winter they’ll bring in cows to mow and fertilize the field for next season. To the west of me, you guessed it, another thousand acres of cornfield!

I grew up in Baltimore city and lived in Texas for six years and everything in the city is at your fingertips. The assessable means of living spoil you. If you want a soda (called pop out here in the mid-west) you could run right down the street and grab one. Here, you better have one in the fridge or your plum outta luck, a twenty-mile trek for sure.

How did people out here ever survive, I ask myself? Very humbly, I must say. I have learned why they call this ‘the bible-belt’ that’s for sure. They have nothing but God, His land, corn, His blessing, and football, God’s choice of sport? Wink wink Husker fans!

Living in the middle of nowhere has really taught me a lot about priorities in life. Living in isolation without the internet taught me a few things also. As Adam was grumping all over the place, beau moped even during football, and me, I just played chess to take my mind to a safe calm place. Not that I wasn’t feeling irritable; I just chose to wrap myself in a warm blanket called chess to keep me comforted.

When the internet came back on, Adam had an epiphany, “Now I know why there was no internet, we needed a break, all three of us!” I went on to explain that is what fasting does for the soul, the same feeling he had from no communication with the outside world; the time of reflection, is the exact feeling you get when you fast. He had never understood fasting and me but this weekend he had a light bulb moment!

What message will you walk away with today? Isolation deepens your spiritual journey! It awakens everything in you that sleeps. It carries you on a joyful hayride. Sure there’s the manure lingering, but when you get off the ride, you feel refreshed; cleansed.

Welcome October! Message received!

“Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.”
~ Wayne Cordeiro