Thank you for being God's Love. Thank you for saying with each prayer - "Father thank you for loving us." You taught me love in so many ways. But you also taught me who God is. Knowing that God is Love has proved my literal saving grace forever. There are so many conversations I want to have with you today about God. I think I need to hear your opinion. But if I am honest- I already have - God's Love meant everything to you. And it is how you treated others - you lived God's Love in all that you did.
Sometimes we look and we cannot see things the way we might should.
The typical view that I would choose is the picture above. This is out my front door - the one I go in and out all the time. I think it is a beautiful picture. I love the colors - the definitions - just really think it is pretty.
Same skyline - from a different vantage point - this time my side yard. Typically Kerry feeds our dogs - today I did. Or maybe typically when I feed the dogs because I do that (not as much as him) I don't take time to look toward the western sky.
And this close up view nearly took my breath away.
Same skyline - same home - same.
But yet not at all the same.
There is a God story in these pictures for me. In the popular religious circles of today there is a word that is being used. I think it has been around for about 5 - maybe 10 years. This word of "reconstruction". The time in life when one looks at what they believe - how they believe and decide to do something different with the knowledge.
Look at the last bullet point ... an impression, model, or re-enactment of a past event formed from the available evidence.
That is where I am. And while that definition is so incredibly vague to me - I think I can explain. I am not sure that this is where others on this journey are - or if they would even agree with my interpretation of the reconstruction definition - but for me this is where I am .... today.
I am finding that while some things seem new - they are in fact really not. I mentioned to Kerry last night that it almost aggravates me at times because I wonder why it has taken until 54 to figure some of this out. He reminded me that I have learned a whole bunch of stuff about other areas of life as time has gone - why would this God journey be any different.
He is right. I have always had somewhat of an impression that I should understand all the God stuff just perfectly - like right now. That what I knew growing up should be what I know. If it is God and I have to know God for all the things of life and the after life to fall into place- then surely I understand the God part in its entirety or at least enough to get where I surely want to go.
Good heavens. Seriously - such a naive approach to life.
Of course God is not something for me to completely understand and figure out completely today - or yesterday and probably not tomorrow either. But I can go back to my original viewpoint and see. I can look to the same spot from a slightly different vantage point - but yet still be in truth and see new.
I was still in my home. I was still Cheryl looking at the western skyline. The foundation was the same - I just took a different vantage point. But the western skyline was still the western skyline.
This is what is happening to me right now.
My foundation was formed a long time ago. I suspect it was formed as she carried me from Florida to Tennessee back to Texas before I was born. Then they carried me throughout Texas and raised me almost exactly how she would have raised me. I have learned about the birth family and to use an expression of old - they are a "God fearing" family. The messages I have received about my grandparents - the stories that are told all show their foundation in God's Love. Her life is also an example of God's Love. She is still today a living breathing evidence of God's Love.
The same is true for the couple who raised me - my parents. Everyday of my life I knew of God's Love. I felt love - I lived in love.
And so Love is taking me on this journey to examine what I believe to be true about God. Jesus is guiding the path - I am looking at what I know to be true - the foundation - but I am also looking to God from all kinds of vantage points. The foundation has not changed. The views to see him are multiplying.
That was the message in 1989 - the other side is below and hangs on my kitchen wall today ...
Continue reading I John 4 - it is a wonderful chapter about God's Love.
"Dear friends, if God loved us this way, we ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God remains in us and his love is made perfect in us." 4:11-12, CEB.
Growing up in that wonderful church in Perrin - we used to sing a song ....
There is no fear in love - but a perfect love casteth out all fear.
For fear hath torment and he that feareth is not made perfect in love.
We love him because he first loved us and I will not be silent.
I will praise his name forever - for my God is Love.
God is Love.
Always, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 2 Corinthians 13:14.
