google images

I love google. I go there for so much! too much! What did we ever do without google? My children will never know the old smell of an encyclopedia, I'm afraid. Or what it means to research exclusively through a card catalog. I love that smell, too. I even loved the sound of the drawers opening and closing. Now - the click - click - click of my computer and the smell of whatever I have in the oven or even this dog curled up at my feet - are the smells that surround me.... I like the dog, so it's okay.

How valuable is an instant resource of images - definitions - explanations - direction - when it comes to learning! and now with my little ones - who always seem to want to know the strangest most wonderful things...like...what is the biggest shark in the world? or who in the world has held their breath the longest? or what is the biggest dog in the world? (wonder what he smelled like...) Google is most definitely a wonderful tool for learning. However - I do believe God has used it long before it came across our computer screens. And it's only now that I realized it...(slow learner. patient God)

Jesus told stories. No power point. No flannel graph. No handouts. Not even a chalk board...He told them orally - and yet googled up powerful images while he spoke. How?...indeed how. The mind. The heart. The life to which he speaks is a plethora - (googled spelling of plethora) - of images that are not just vivid - but personal.

The life to which he speaks is a plethora of images that are vivid - and PERSONAL.

The question is, will the listener move past the words that she hears into the images of her own life that so tenderly, colorfully, intimately give meaning to His Love?

I will never forget the first time this happened to me. It was 4:30 a.m. I was alone in my husband's house. It was not mine. It was not ours. He was gone all night without explanation. I was awake all night wondering why. This life could not be mine. This life I had chased after, far from my God, and deep into my own desires was a nightmare. What had I done? "OH MY GOD, NO!" I screamed. I screamed long and hard into the dark - the empty, cold, dark of that little ranch, that was not the castle I had dreamed of but rather a dungeon that my own desires had lured me into. What would I do now? I was trapped. Or was I? There on my knees and over my sobbing - one verse came to mind. How? How in the midst of such emotion and lack of clarity could a verse come to my hysterical, confused and scared mind...God. The miracle and wonder and purpose of the Spirit of God in flesh...God was with me, watching me, all along and had never, ever forsaken me - despite the fact I had literally flipped Him off years ago. And He did not consume me in those days with fire or strike me with holy lightning or disease - but because of His grace, He let me live in what I wanted - what I'd ask for...separation from Him. Silence from His influence. Until this moment when I cried out to Him.
OH FOR THE TEACHABLE MOMENTS!!! when the learner will hear... and receive...

This teachable moment was God's and He gave it to me - ...and with it He changed every other moment from then on. Open heart - yawning for help...I heard the Words - and I saw the images of my life - BIG SCREEN- before my eyes...and I knew God spoke to me - His eye on me - His arms around me - my heart in His hands...safe and loved... He said:

"Fear not." - and I saw this marriage that I believed was a safe place, but was not - at all.

For I am with you." - I saw my sin. All of it. I'll spare you. (My mother can read now - two years past her stroke! praise God! so no details...) And I was in horror - humbled - embarrassed - that God saw it all. How proud and arrogant I had been in so many of those moments - ... But I did not feel His horror - His embarrassment of me - just his love - and why??? only because of the Words He continued to speak...in that moment...

"Be not dismayed." - All of it was right where He was - loving me.

"For I am your God." - I did not live like He was my God - and the images I saw were of all the gods I'd lived for...on the throne was me. Just me. But God was there...watching me. letting me. loving me. immovable in His love - despite my unfaithfulness - my disgusting parade of lust. What would I do now? How could I ever be free? Be clean? I am so dirty. Buried. I saw the house. The marriage. The people. Everything that was supposed to be good - but that held me stagnant in this filth.

"I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10

I learned this verse in 6th grade - and had not considered it once in all my days since. It was rote; it was my parent's influence; - it was not my life's persuasion. Of this I am most certain and so are you, right??? - Those of you who knew me then - and saw me living life for me - you know this is true.

As I sat there - realizing all of this .... I could not fully understand the end of that verse...not one image came to mind of the outcome - of how to get to a place of help and strength and whatever righteousness would mean - just a sense that I would be okay. That God was with me. No punishment - my own choices had punished me enough. Only help. Only strength - only His clean hand that would take me out and over this hole. What I would do next ... was live by faith. I called my brothers. Both of them. Both loved me - both loved God. One set my head on straight. The other one moved me out. And the rest - well... the rest is the history that paints the images of my life - and ignite the truth of God's Word. They are mine to hold before Him - unashamed - and He has touched every one.

It still happens. Not the running away from God. I run to Him forever now. The google up images are what happens - when I read and seek the Word of God over my life. To every prayer there is the Word of God - that my God - my ever present Father - who sees my life and has watched, and allowed the download of every file; - He meets with the images of this life and brings them to my heart - my mind. He tells me the story that illuminates His Word so that I will not miss Him.

Only today I heard of a tragedy...one that I cannot bear - because I do not understand bad things that happen without purpose...and I went with this image and my tears - my fear - to His Word. And He spoke softly - bringing to mind the day my father died...senselessly... in a car accident... how I sat in the backseat of a car - whose car? I don't even remember... driving "home" to a home that would never be the same again...Where are you God? Where are you in this? today....for this family?

"I will lift up my eyes to the hills; from whence comes my help?" People surrounded us. Meals. Moving was made possible. Love was given. A hand to hold. Provision we could not have imagined or realized we needed - was there.

"My help comes from the Lord," The faces I cannot remember - but it was God. He is love.

" who made heaven and earth." Psalm 121:1-2 It is all His - this broken world - and this heaven that I long for apart from tears and pain. He made it, and is with me in it all. And I only know that from the Word that followed...

"As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His people from this time forth and forever." Psalm 125:2

"Pray for one another, that you may be healed." James 5:16

He is right here. Right here with me. Right there with them. And He has impressed me to pray for them and those affected - and has impressed me to be His active hands - His everlasting love - that is often faceless and nameless images for those who receive it.