Grace Like Rain

The Catholic Church steeple sliced the setting sun, as it slipped below the horizon on 6.28.11.  

Another day gone.  

The lawn chair pointed west and I imagined a rousing baseball game under the lights just nouth of the watertower.  Bible, notebook, cell phone, wine glass and a few fireflies competed for my attention.  

A perfect summer evening. 

This hymn seeped from my somewhere in my memory and I couldn't help but sing it.

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,

Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,

Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide;

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

"Great is Thy faithfulness," O God my Father,

There is no shadow of turning with Thee;

Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not

As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

"Great is Thy faithfulness!" "Great is Thy faithfulness!"

  Morning by morning new mercies I see;

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—

    "Great is Thy faithfulness," Lord, unto me!

I shouldn't really be on here today, I have 2000 wedding photos to edit, and the above picture is not even last evening's sunset.  It IS June, and it IS the sky, but it's the morning after a pre-dawn storm.

But I just wanted to share my "moment" with you. Certainly a reminder to:

Set your minds on things above, not on things of this earth. Colossians 3:2  

Seek first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.  Mattheww 6:33   

For the things which are seen are temporary but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18

Last evening I paused to ponder. 

From the book Spiritual Java

Our authority comes from real faith, which is found in rest. Peaceful rest is the climate that faith grows in.

Rest. Rest awile in the presence of the Life-giving One.  He is the Lord of your spirit, soul, and body.  Regardless of how much your current circumstances may have distracted you from God, you can stop thinking your own thoughts and start living by faith.  His Spirit will help you.

From a message by David Legge:

In 1916 a man called F.M. Lehman was touched by the words that he saw scribbled on the wall of an asylum, and he incorporated them into the last stanza of his hymn, and the lyrics read like this:

'Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky'

If that was madness, we all could do with a good dose of it, and allow it to revive our hearts in love towards God, send us confirmation of  His love for us; and take us from dead orthodoxy into a living, vital relationship with Jesus Christ.

I'm closer to dying than being born and for the first time in a long while, I feel alive. I'm finding grace, peace and rest by standing under the cover of the One who never changes. 

He will keep you in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Him. Isaiah 26:3