"He Himself" - the Master Husbandman - "knew what He would do" in the repression cutting down, cutting back the new growth, "that it may bring forth more fruit"...

There should be neither undergrowth, nor overgrowth, but balanced growth. Spiritual equilibrium alone will bring forth much fruit both in us and in others. We were created for more than our own spiritual development; reproduction, not mere development, is the goal to mature - reproduction in other lives.

There is a tendency in some characters, running parallel to the high cultivation that spends its whole energy on production of bloom at the expense of seed. The flowers that are bent on perfecting themselves, by becoming double, end in barrenness, and a like barrenness comes to the soul whose interests are all concentrated upon its own spiritual well-being, heedless of the needs around. The true, ideal flower, is the one that uses its gifts as means to an end; the brightness and sweetness are not for its own glory; they are but to attract the bees and butterflies that will fertilise and make it fruitful."

"The martens have been reading me a faith lesson. They come in flights at this time of year - lovely things with blue throats and feathered claws - one slept in my room last night and another darted in at the open window before I was up, swept round and out again.

Their faith lesson is this - that their wings need the sense of "an empty void" below to give them a start - their leg muscles have no spring in them and when they perch by accident on a level place they are stuck fast - poor things, we did not know that natural history fact in the past and when we have found them on our flat Algier roof with its parapet protection, we have thought they had got hurt somehow, and more than once we have tried to feed them till they died, instead of doing the one thing that they needed - tossing them off into emptiness.

So we need not wonder if we are not allowed to stay long in level sheltered places - our faith wings are like the martens and mostly need the gulf of some emergency to give them their start on a new flight. We will not fear when we feel empty air under them." -Lillias Trotter "A Passion for the Impossible"

I tell you that I'd prefer to pound my passion into the rich recesses of some great instrument, or to personify humanity's affect with the persistent stroking of a brush, but none of these means seem ever to satiate, and so I pick up this pen again, attempting to propel my passions into a channel of understanding. My day's activities flush through the filter of arranged words and cataloged memoirs, wherein the calendar's page turns on the collage of arranged memory, and either the completion or failure of consummated expression. Words seem to never give the voice to which I intend them, and their tenor oxidizes when exposed to the air of other's eyes. It seems those who create have to share, for some curious compulsion urges them straight past their fears and out onto the canvas of another's mind. It seems at times that my veins course with a molten vigor that propels me to the strangest spurts of joyful expression, and I know not how to contain or reign in this divine bliss. Of course, joy's counterpart -- despair is a close friend as well, and with these two faithful companions I seem to gracefully crash in their bounds, seemingly incapable of living in the mellow and contained ways I see my fellow men conducting. It is as if I am determined to detail every cranny in this crooked existence, and to personify the hue of every thread that binds and supports the golden band of God's faithfulness in our broken lives.

The tape rolls on, and the backdrop is 1 John 1:1-4. I am captivated by the means employed to reveal deity, and the sensory description actuated to propound our faith. It is given us that He is the Word of Life, and in studying this, it seems that this word is to be the vital word, or the intellectual word which depicts and embodies life. This Word of Life whispers purpose into every created thing, and was revealed with the hung skin of a mortal, and the life breath of a man. Not only was this word manifested to the world, but they beheld Him, and His glory among them. Their senses were engaged in every situation as the unfolding of eternity past broke through and unrolled in their present. Eternity spoken in the Law suddenly interposed itself in human form, and thus the eternal dialogue breached the bounds of religion and catapulted straight into the souls of man. The incarnate Word became as flesh and bore the branding of sinful man, wherein His redemptive plan was actuated by His condescension to us, and by His procuring of eternal life for us.

This vault of heavenly joy is permanently unlocked to us through the manifested word of God, and remains an inexhaustible fountain of refreshment for our weary and parched souls. I am attempting to realign my thinking of earth's joy's, for their presence is not sure as the hope been secured. My delight must be in the Giver, for the gift can surely change, and earth's joys pale and sting with the decline of created glory. Our longings speak to our eternal casing, and our hearts muse of the the world to come. New life walks beside death, and deeper sorrows introduce purer joy, while all along our hearts yearn, groan, and labor within to be released from their longing and satisfied eternally. Our pilgrimage ought strengthen our resolve, that with Creation we might finally be freed into the unbroken praise of our Maker, and the land of "no more." This Life--the very Word which is the Light of men, has been manifested, and seeks to lead us this day to the hope that will never disappoint.

Sunrise service commenced the day, wherein the first lines of praise convicted my ill-prepared sanctuary. Too much doing, and too little margin where the days joys are simply insufficient fodder for the sin-cursed soul. The truths we sang were like seasoned wood which quickly ignited my fire. By the full dawn my heart was warm, and looking out at the sea of my Maker's face eased and pacified my cares. The sun continued rising, as the promise to the righteous, and at the noonday it seemed I might bust for all the joy. Delicious and wholesome spinach, meat and the like filled our stomachs, while the love-soaked day with the family of His selection filled my soul. Wood-splitting, frisbee, shotgun shooting, cartwheels, and satisfaction upon the faces of my young and exhausted cousins. Thank you God for all of your gifts, but none more than your Son who died so that I might live! Because He lives, I can face tomorrow! Much love to you my friends.

Yesterday was Psalm 73. I love this Psalm. Asaph begins declaring in the affirmative, but is swiftly swept along by the tide of his time. His proclamation is as sure as the first blooms who wither in the frost. His life had become the screenplay which dictated the narrative in his mind, and what he saw spoke more convincingly than what he'd known to be true.
He says, "My feet has almost slipped...when I saw..." While Creation was pouring forth speech, contradiction and injustice coupled to combat truth that lead back to the Garden... "If God was so good, why I am in the dust? Why this continual suffering..."?
The eye is the lamp of the soul, and Asaph had become dull by looking too long in the wrong places. Whose eye does not weary of the vanity that fills this earth? But wait, this is not end...
A sudden juxtaposition occurs in the psalm, and in an instant, Asaph perceives the end, when man stands before His Maker. I imagine coming into a great and glorious room, full of wonderful distractions, to have the walls collapse into blinding whiteness. Clarity would be no longer evasive, and infinite, oozing sadness would seep from the heart been devoted to the temporal.
Such was his, as he perceived the incorrigible condition of his unregenerate heart. What a change results! The man is swept away, and that great, white room becomes the enveloping arms of truth, that henceforth enliven and strengthen his heart. He jumps from one billow to the next and utters deeper, and more penetrable truths that now strengthen and enliven my feeble praise.
"24 With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory. 25 Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. 26 My flesh and my heart may [will] fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Blessed is the man who has found every facet to be faulty, and every relationship flawed, for it is he who say: "28 But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works."