The midnight oil

Mist swirls up off the hot earth into the cool night air, as if the hurry of the day scurries up off the planet into the peace of the sky in drifts like dross.

If you steady your eyes long enough on a single point of black on the horizon, you can watch the stars blur as they fall across the velvet like comets. Shooting stars to wish upon, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you...

And so stare, up at True north, breathe in the quiet, let go the noise of the day, shake loose the dust of too many commitments and close eyes to tasks undone at day's end. Breathe deep the rich misty moist, listen long the cricket song, hold close the early August last days of summer, dream babies sleeping in beds, try to find sleep that somewhere hides elusive in the shadows of the thick night.

Sins swept away with the morning coming soon, held up to heaven by the pine bows worshiping in the moon's happy glow, the clouds gathering close like a silver mirror in a bowl across the western sky. The kittens scramble across the porch boards, learning night vision hunting tricks from mother yowling, two little bodies scurrying with feet as loud as elephants in the stillness. The swing creaks in the humid air, and I sigh a little sigh of regret and longing, thoughts drifting to tasks of the dawn: no milk for breakfast and what-shall-we-eat-tomorrow? I turn toward the dark house and the chocolate sheets where my lover slumbers and have a waking dream of a night of no insomnia. But then who would see the beauty of a mist-laden night in the moonshine when August is just beginning?

I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. (Isaiah 44:22)

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Note: Caleb is doing well! Thanks for all the prayers! His puncture wound is healing beautifully, and the symptoms we thought might be a reaction to the shot he received turned out to be a simple cold virus, just as the doctor thought they might be. In the 24 hours following our last ER visit, Rosy and I both came down with the same cold symptoms, reassuring us that Caleb did, indeed, just have a head cold. God was just asking us, once again, to lean hard and trust Him. We did, and we are through the thick of it and out the other side, just living normal life again, normal busy life, trying to keep hard shoes and socks on a little boy who is used to running barefoot. Please keep the puncture wound in your prayers as it can get badly infected for up to 3 weeks following the injury. 

The waiting morning

It's five o'clock, and I am restlessly awake. My full body scan is scheduled for 9 a.m. Even though I won't know the results for a week, the scan looms large. An hour of images taken, the slow slide underneath the counter, just inches from my nose. The gray little woman who always brings me back to the hot room where the equipment whirs and I must lie still for that whole hour.

Just as He knows every hair on my aching head, knows the painful places sickened by the radiation and the shots that reverse my thyroid hormones, He knows the results already of this scan day. He knows whether I will get that magical pronouncement, "no visible metastasis". He knows. I can rest in the waiting, because He already knows.

...the exhortation was a vital part of a passage dealing with Christians who were suffering (I Peter 4:12-19). Peter referred to those who suffer according to the will of God (4:19). The sovereign God had allowed severe trials to come to those believers in accordance with His own wise and perfect will. Therefore, they were urged to commit the keeping of their souls to him. That means they could entrust the safety and security of their souls to God, their faithful Creator. When we come to verse 7 of chapter 5, it is apparent that their suffering was causing them some anxiety. They were beginning to worry. The word care in Greek is merimna, meaning anxiety, or a fearful and painful uneasiness of the mind. It is the crippling sin of worry that our Lord said chokes the Word so that it becomes unfruitful (Matthew 13:22). In my crisis hour, I certainly did not want to cut off the message and ministry of God's Word. That would have brought me a shameful defeat. Paul had used the same word in its verb form when he wrote, Be careful for nothing (Philippians 4:6). He tells us not to worry about anything, for anxiety comes from not trusting God. Like Martha, at times we are careful and troubled about many things (Luke 10:41) when we should be anxious for nothing. Nothing means not even one thing! Peter told us what we are to do with all of our anxieties. We are to cast them upon our Lord. Casting all your care upon Him. The Greek word for cast is ballo, which means to deposit with or to commit. While it is not the same word translated commit in 1 Peter 4:19, it does contain the same thought. We are to take our painful anxieties and hurl them--all of them--on the Lord. (Lehmann Strauss)