Moonbeams

I love the moon. I'm not someone who pulls out thier high-powered telescope to probe the moon's surface, or read up on the history of every single meteor that's buried deep in it's surface. I just like the moon. It glows. It's big and white-gray. God made it. Ergo, I love the moon.

God keeps waking me up all weeklong around 2-4am. Why? Because when I go to bed, the moon is not visible to me, and so I never see it. Rather, if God didn't wake me up at 2-4 am in the morning for the last few nights, I'd never see the moon. God wakes me up at the exact moment the moon is at perfect eye level to where I'm in my bed. I don't have to turn around. I don't have to lift my head. I don't have to shift out of the bedclothes that I've pulled snug around me. It's too perfect to be chance.

I was planning on reading God is Love last night before bed, but I got distracted by the inside fold of the cover. On the outside back of the cover there is this huge color, close-up of Pope Benedict XVI's face and that papal cape he so often wears. I thought that here was a man, along with all the other religious, who loves God just as much as I do, perhaps even moreso than I do at the present time.

James 1: 9-11.

The brother in lowly circumstances should take pride in his high standing,

and the rich one in his lowliness, for he will pas away "like the flower of the field."

For the sun comes up with its scorching heat and dries up the grass, its flower droops, and the beauty of its appeance vanishes. So will the rich person fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

This passage struck me last night, because just a few hours before during dinner with a friend I was worried about what would I do with my material possessions upon entering the convent. This vow of poverty that lingers in the distance sometimes bothers me, because then I figure I shouldn't buy anything now so that I won't have to part with it later. What was the point of buying all those souveniors in Rome this past summer if I can't display them? What is the point of new shoes if I can't use them 'til there's holes in the soles? What on earth am I going to do with all the fabric I bought for future quilts?

Oddly, God wants empty, vain, self-centered me.

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Espousal

For he who has become your husband is
your Maker;
his name is the LORD of hosts;
Your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel,
called God of all the earth.

Though the mountains leave their place
and the hills be shaken,
My love shall never leave you
nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
says the LORD, who has mercy on you.
Isaiah 54:5, 10

Me and God

I'm still in the desert and I am surprised by how much I like it because I thought it would be terrible: lost, thirsting, miserable. Instead I'm wrapped up in God.

I have been pulled away from my friends a bit, fewer "chance" encounters with people on campus, just seeing people when exactly necessary for comfort or to pass along a word of notice. I even avoid my MP3 a bit more, looking for the silence; but I'm not hiding in the chapel on campus. Instead I am sitting on park benches re-reading Hosea chapter 2 or browsing through the psalms.

God's teaching me, speaking to my heart often times without my realizing it. I've noticed that God is teaching me some things, speaking to me because I'm more accepting of some ideas that I would have balked at just days ago. He is showing me how I can be more than just His servant.

This time alone with God ... if I can be forward, I'll characterise as courtship? wooing? I only answer in the affirmative.

I like this "alone" time so much that I don't want to tell anyone anymore. I like it being just God and me.

We're a team
Me and God
-- Josh Turner, Me and God

Murphy's Law

Since she has not known

that it was I who gave her

the grain, the wine, and the oil,

And her abundance of silver,

and of gold, which they used for Baal,

Therefore I will take back my grain in its

time

and my wine in its season;

I will snatch away my wool and my flax,

with which she covers her nakedness.

So now I will lay bare her shame

before the eyes of her lovers,

and no one can deliver her out of myhand.

I will bring an end to all her joy,

her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths,and all her solemnities.

I will lay waste her vines and fig trees,

of which she said, "There are the hire

my lovers have given me";

I will turn them into rank growth

and wild beasts shall devour them.

I will punish her for the days of the Baals,

for whom she burnt incense

While she decked herself out with her rings

and her jewels,

and, in going after her lovers,

forgot me, says the LORD.

Therefore, I will hedge her in her way with thorns

and erect a wall against her,

so that she cannot find her paths.

If she runs after her lovers, she hall not

overtake them;

if she looks for them she shall not find them.

Then she shall say, "I will go back t my first husband,

for it was better with me then than now."

So I will allure her;

I will lead her into the desert

and speak to her heart.

From there I will give her the vineyards she

had,

and the valley of Achor as a door of hope.

She shall respond there as in the days of her

youth,

when she came up from the land of Egypt.

On that day, says the LORD,

she shall call me "My husband,"

and never gain "My Baal."

Then will I remove from her mouth the

names of the Baals,

so that they shall no longer be invoked.

I will make a covenant for them on that day,

with the beasts of the field,

with the birds of the air,

and with the things that crawl on theground.

Bow and sword and war

I will destroy from the land,

and I will let them take their rest in

security.

I will espouse you to me forever:

I will espouse you in right and in justice,

in love and in mercy;

I will espouse you in fidelity,

and you shall know the LORD.

On that day I will respond, says the LORD;

I will respond to the heavens,

and they shall respond to the earth;

the earth shall respond to the grain, and wine, and oil,

and these shall respond to Jezreel.I

will sow him for myself in the land,

and I will have pity on Lo-ruhama.

I will say to Lo-ammi,

"You are my

people,"

and he shall say, "My God!"

Hosea 2:4-25