Journey in Intercession

A New Beginning . . .

wallwatcher — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:24:27 +0000

Sounds redundant, doesn’t it? I mean, aren’t all beginnings ‘new’? So maybe, we are renewed in ever-deepening cycles of Life. Our transformations happen one layer at a time, one level at a time, slowly…but then, sometimes, we are thrust by the pressures of Life into its rapids–and a new ‘beginning’ bursts through all the walls we’ve constructed against it, into our consciousness–Living water–pushing and shoving, washing away the dust of our old understandings, and suddenly, for a space in time, we see clearly.

May 2012 bring you clarity. . .

Take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you. (Ephesians 4:20)

Transforming Grace . . .

wallwatcher — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:28:21 +0000

I’ve been praying for healing a long time–for all of us. For friends, colleagues, families, those who struggle and those who suffer. It’s a long list–as long as the entire population of the earth. We’re hard on each other, and on ourselves. But there is a road to healing that bypasses our human baggage: our memories, our wounds, and the spirit of offense we cling to throughout our lives. But that journey requires our willingness to lay down our own understandings, and live in God’s presence–continuously.

I know this first hand. Like most of you, I am afflicted with a character that takes offenses seriously. So this week, when I tried again, to reach out to someone with whom I’ve had three years of stormy encounters and she again rejected my invitation to heal and reconcile our relationship, three years of perceived offenses, bad feelings, and combative instincts came rushing back into my memory. It’s like having an overflowing septic tank back up–dumping all that raw sewage from years of hostilities back into my mind. It was not ‘pretty’.

But this time I chose freedom. I sat on the end of my bed, praying, and let the flood of God’s presence and grace replace all the ugliness. I opened my heart to His presence and grace, and in that moment, He replaced my understandings, bitterness, and rancor with love, peace, and a new insight into healing.

So I’m letting Him heal me, and praying that my accepting healing will free her too–because we are one Body, one spotless bride…

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For we were all baptized by^[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴ Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. (1 Corinthians 12:12-14)

Phoenix Rising…Again…

wallwatcher — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 06:10:17 +0000

It’s been a long, challenging summer–at least for me. In June a truck t-boned me on the way to work–just past the abandoned shell of a barn from my last post. He came up over the hill and into my car before I was through the intersection. I never saw him coming until he was two feet from my passenger door. He never stopped, slowed down, or even swerved, although there was an empty parking lot on his right side–no evidence (e.g., tire skid marks) that he ever even hit the brakes.

So again, another ambulance trip to Hershey’s Trauma Center, and another night in their ICU… I am so tired of this ‘trauma by auto.’ I am recovering though–except for some residual neck and chest wall issues.

Lots of other folks in the region also have had their challenges–tornadoes, floods, and resulting devastation that left hundreds of families without homes, incomes, or property. It’s been a tough summer.

The summer also brought us golden afternoons, vacations at the beaches, and fields of summer wheat, corn, soy beans, tomatoes, and other fruits and veggies. In the middle of the natural chaos, we’ve been blessed and provided with a bountiful harvest by a God who never forgets His children, no matter what havoc sometimes obscures our view of Him.

However, now Summer itself is slowly surrendering its last fruits: crops, harvests, storms, floods, sushine, and warmth, as Fall enters, then quickly yields to winter. Pennsylvanians have hard winters–long cold, icy, snowy months that claw at your senses, and challenge your capacity to navigate the roads.

But Winter also brings a renewed sense of community, family, and relationship, as the wanderlust of Summer turns inward toward hearth, home, and we Pennsylvanians, along with the rest of the Northern hemisphere, relearn the joys of living together, in confined spaces…

Life is like that, isn’t it–a mixture of challenges, chaos, and blessings.

You care for the land and water it;
   you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
   to provide the people with grain,
   for so you have ordained it.^[d]
¹⁰ You drench its furrows and level its ridges;
   you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
¹¹ You crown the year with your bounty,
   and your carts overflow with abundance.
¹² The grasslands of the wilderness overflow;
   the hills are clothed with gladness.
¹³ The meadows are covered with flocks
   and the valleys are mantled with grain;
   they shout for joy and sing.
   (Psalm 65:9-13)

It’s Almost Gone . . .

wallwatcher — Sat, 14 May 2011 06:09:09 +0000

Mystery of the Disappearing Barn

wallwatcher — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 04:05:20 +0000

Disappearing Barn

This post ought to begin with “it was a dark and stormy night” Because it was. I was driving through the rain, on a stretch of back road, on my way home from work. It was close to midnight and, as I approached the intersection of Locust and rte 641, I saw a tractor-trailer on the road just ahead of me.

I kept my eyes on his tail lights, until I saw the truck pull across the road and back into a space next to an old abandoned barn and chicken coop. As I approached the curve myself, the driver tuned his lights off. When I passed the barn, the trailer was just a barely-distinguishable shape behind the ruin.

Not wanting to stop and confront a tractor trailer in the dark, I drove on by. But I had an overwhelming feeling of suddenly being trust into the plot of a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys Mystery.Lots of questions occurred to me.

Why would anyone need to park a tractor trailer at that site?
If the driver wanted to sleep, there were lots of other, more accessible free truck stops and off-the-road spaces to rest;
Why would he wait until midnight to show up?
Why did he turn his lights off when he saw me coming?
What was so urgent that he had to go there in the rain?

I was off from work for a few days, but when I passed by again, the was a backhoe parked about 25 feet behind the barn. Later that week, I noticed that someone had been excavating behind the barn, and there was a large pile of crumbling wooden planks in what appeared to be a scrap heap. I assume someone had been dissembling the barn itself.

The past few weeks there have been daylight escapades with UHaul trucks, and later, an SUV, all parked with their tags out of sight of passing drivers. The upper structures of the barn are gone, and the concrete foundation has been dug up and moved to a space outside the structure. The chicken coup has collapsed on one side, but that foundation is still in place. it’s all verycurious…

Dust

wallwatcher — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:15:56 +0000

Lord, You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” You sweep people away in the sleep of death— they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered. (Psalm 90:3,5-6)

Today is Ash Wednesday, and the first day of Lent–40 days of fasting and abstinence. It’s also a day in the Christian liturgy marked by the distribution of ashes, with the sobering admonition to ‘remember man that you are dust, and to dust you will return.’

I’ve been thinking a lot about dust lately–mostly because it shows up everywhere, no matter how secluded the location. Where does it come from?

It builds up on every shelf and horizontal surface in my world–at home, work, in my car, everywhere! I’m sure that if I ever laid still for any length of time, there would be a level of dust on me too!

This week I finally bought a duster. No more ‘dust-busting’ with rags, brooms, or vacuums. It does have disposable covers, but at least now I have a handy tool for a very tedious job.

‘Dust’ shows up in all areas of human activity. Bernard Haring, a Catholic theologian, once called the 1900 years of religiosity obscuring the gospel mandate ‘the dust of the centuries’. I understand that–sometimes I’ve viewed the church as a seriously crusty armadillo, weighed down with so many humanly-mandated rules and ‘interpretations’ that there’s no room for the Spirit to lead anyone anywhere!

I’m resigned to the fact that there will always be dust–as long as the Earth revolves, physical life decays, and bureaucrats govern–but I’m also committed to removing dust, because it obscures the Light of His Spirit. There is no dust in His Kingdom.

Ponderment . . .

wallwatcher — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 04:15:27 +0000

I’m tooling through Walmart, past the movie DVD’s, the CDs, and HD TV’s, and around a circular counter display of myriad small, black, shiny, rectangular things… “Mobile Communication and Entertainment Devices”, in uniform rows–prices, descriptions, platforms, alpha-numeric pads… so many choices, so much technology — every electronic option — to play music on, plug into, talk into, tap into, or text into… I think about the possible uses; the number is unnerving

Who said we needed to hot-wire every waking moment of our lives?

Who decided we should plug up all our orifices with noise or sensation?

What we we trying to block out or drown out?

Isn’t Creation enough?

Aren’t people much more interesting to eavesdrop on

than amorphous sounds, throbbing against our already-compromised ear drums?

Our God-created, complex, dynamic, ever evolving earth awaits just outside our somatically-induced indifference,

waiting to be discovered, waiting to be encountered, waiting to interact with us,

Just the other side of our surround-sound, numbed coma.

This culturally-endorsed addiction to electronically-stimulated narcissistic cocooning as stress reliever is a claustrophobic nightmare…

I move quickly away from the counter, down the aisle and out the door, sucking in big gulps of the night air.

I open the car door and sit there, with my windows rolled down, in the parking lot, listening to people walking past me, talking, laughing, arguing…

Thank you Father.

Prayer Changes Everything!

wallwatcher — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:21:03 +0000

Yet still, the future belongs to those who pray. Prayer is the bridge between what should be and what will be. The diligent prayer of a righteous people will ultimately determine the destiny of our children. Therefore, it is our responsibility to leave to those-yet-to-be-born a world in revival as their inheritance. Hanging in the balance of eternity is the ultimate climax of our Creator – the kingdoms of this world becoming the Kingdom of our God. (Kris Vallotton, Bethel Church)

2011 – A Year of Peace-full Change

wallwatcher — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:58:48 +0000

Through the heartfelt mercies of our God, God’s Sunrise will break in upon us, Shining on those in the darkness, those sitting in the shadow of death, Then showing us the way, one foot at a time, down the path of peace. (Luke 1:78-79)

May 2011 be a year of healing, restoration, and reconciliation among families, friends, colleagues, neighborhoods, and nations! May we all know fuller lives, deeper loves, less stressful times, financial relief, and abundant blessings from our loving God! AMEN!

In His Presence, Peace . . .

wallwatcher — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:32:12 +0000

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76,79)

May we all become fully aware of His Presence in our lives, and may that awareness unleash His healing, restoring, and reconciling Power over our lives, families, and World!