“And she pondered all of these things in her heart.” Serene and loving, she pondered the truth revealed to her in her ordinary daily life. She accepted all without argument, no matter how seemingly outrageous. This is how you behave when you are without sin.

And I look around me at people, events and ideas, past and present, and relentlessly analyze. I am starting to feel it in my stomach — the acids ready to digest all that is before me, and I am disgusted. I have been a glutton…and to what end? I suppose there is a grand sense of control and superiority when you analyze and strain to understand, as if you could. What arrogance! This is how you behave when you are a sinner.

Which approach leads to understanding, to the truth, to heaven?

I have been sorting through years of my own writing — mostly on scraps of paper and receipts frantically seized at an unexpected need while sitting at a traffic light, incensed, inspired, insistent on writing it down. Sometimes it is a rhyme to fit an unwritten song. Sometimes it is a rage against the people in my life. Sometimes it is a grand observation. Maybe it helped to write it down, to set it aside so it did not have to occupy vital short-term storage capacity. Like I am doing now, on a couch, in my robe, with a cup of coffee on a dark rainy fall morning.

I could sit and sip and worry about each of my kids, going down the list one more time, broken prayers that trail off into another stream without noticing the distraction. Distracted by analyzing once again, hoping to grab hold of the crux of the problem, Would they be healed if I could figure out their riddle? No. So stop it. People are mysteries to be reverenced, not problems to be solved.

It started out so cozy but now my robe is getting too hot and the coffee is starting to burn my stomach. I am in over my head.  But the cold rain speaks to me: Don’t you know all of this analyzing is vanity? Seasons come and go. I, the Lord your God,  am in control.  Why don’t you tend to what I have set right in front of you, your daily bread? It has all been worked out already. Be at peace. I have your children in my heart. It is you who needs to straighten up. Let the earth digest the leaves and the rain wash it down.  Accept these things in love. Ponder them in your heart. I will not let you go.

 

 

  Dec 05, 2015

3 comments

Marie, this is a wonderful blog! I had no idea you blogged, along with your other talents. It’s funny that although I haven’t seen you in too many years, I feel like I know you… I can’t possibly, as our lives have taken such different tracks, but I love the way your writing lays open your soul.

Thanks, Linda! I am just sticking my toe in the water!

Wow. Had not checked out the website in a while… This little blog is great. Keep writing whatever the Good Lord puts on your heart…

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