Further Along My Passage

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 Snow Geese Arriving 2

“My faith has found a resting place, Not in device or creed; I trust the Ever-living One, His wounds for me shall plead.  I need no other argument, I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died, And that He died for me.” Lidie H. Edmund

“We who have believed enter that rest.” Hebrews 4:3

More Snow Geese


 

’Say’s I to myself’ should be the motto of my journal.  So wrote Henry David Thoreau, 11 November 1851.


Jeffrey S. Cramer, Curator of collections of the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, writes:  Thoreau’s business was to explore the fundamental facts of existence in order to be able to recognize the real eternal truth and substance underlying all existence, as distinct from the actual, the distracting and sometimes misdirecting commotion that prevents our paying attention.  The task he set himself was to find the reality that transcended his day-to-day experiences.  It was a sacred quest for the miracle that daily confronted him: life; nature; spirit.” (From the Introduction to the book I to Myself, an annotated selection from the journal of Henry D. Thoreau). 
Thoreau’s writings have been a life-long inspiration for my own journals....acg


Snow Geese in Flight


Elsewhere in my journals I have quoted doxologies.  None, however, meets the need of this new year’s beginning hour more than these words (from Jude 1:24):  “Now unto  Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.”  Without thinking of myself a seer, a sage, or a prophet, I observe our world with all the objectivity I can muster and cannot help but suggest that this New Year will bring cataclysmic changes in our world like none other.   Surely it will require a falling on our knees in faith for dependence on God to live in wholeness and health.  In my life time I cannot remember a previous moment when evil and uncertainty have been more pervasive.  In keeping with such foreboding, these lines from Amy Carmichael ‘s strong faith bring me great encouragement:


From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.


From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.


Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God


Amy Carmichael, Flame of God

Snow Geese

I spent a major portion of the Advent season reading the biography of Adoniram Judson, famous American missionary to Burma during the first half of the 19th century.  No other biography has absorbed my interest with such intensity.    To read the story of his life is to come to know what it means to live a purpose driven life and to ask one’s self in comparison, how miserably short one may have been is using one’s time and talents with equal measure.  The book underscores what Scripture means when it speaks of redeeming one’s time. 


Snow Geese aloft 1



“Grace is not something one earns or purchases; grace is a treasure that is found!  When a person finally realizes that salvation is only by the grace of God, received through faith in the saving work of Christ, he or she has made the greatest discovery that could ever be made, for it brings eternal life.  But there is an even greater dimension to the grace of God.  When we do “find” grace, it is actually because God in His infinitely precious grace has found us and revealed to us the Savior of our souls.  Just as God found Moses in the desert and found Paul on the road to Damascus, then saved and called them to His service, so He finds us, and then we also find His saving grace.”               

 Henry M. Morris, Days of Praise

Snow Geese





“That which from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life; for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us: that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.  And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.  

1 John 1:1-4