Tag Archives: Thirst

Opened Wide

Ancient Hebrew, Christian, Lectio Divina, Lent, Religion, Spiritual Formation, , , , , , , , , , ,

   In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
 And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.
John 1: 4-5

I have been slain by light. Drawn from the darkness of sin, and death into a glorious blinding in-dwelling life.  How can I even move?  How can I even speak?  Like Job I cry out from this encounter with you:  “my ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you and I AM UNDONE”…

John 1:1, the Genesis of the New Covenant.  Here THE WORD leaps from John’s lips, leaps into the chaos, pitches his tent in the flesh, in the neighborhood, leaps into the darkest places of man’s hearts and drives his stake…his cross.  This one is MINE!

In my beginning was my Creator, fashioning me in the darkness of the womb.  Knitting a tapestry of variegated threads each a line in my story.  I was named upon his lips before there was a drop of water, a creature, a song.  The Star-Breather, who spoke all things into being, who is himself the light of creation, gave me to the earth for this time, this season, and he who gave me breath, sustains me every moment of the day by the word of his power. I place my hand upon my mouth.  How are these words even possible?

”  …who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,  Hebrews 1:3″

The sages teach that when God spoke the world into existence the Word is still reverberating, creating, echoing through time.  God is still speaking.  They say that if God ever stopped speaking creation into being it would revert back to the nothingness of “before” the chaos into which the WORD spoke and life was.   So, what is this life that is the light of men, this Chai?   Shovel in hand I head to the deeper part of the word and stand at the edge of the dig amazed to find that life in Hebrew revolves around the stomach.

To the Ancient Hebrews life is seen as a full stomach while an empty stomach is seen as death. –Jeff Benner

How could the Lenten theme of denial, emptiness and fasting tie in to a full stomach? Do I have this all backwards?  I could hear the wind of God and I looked to where it blew the leaves of the pages, the rustling seemed to  whisper to me…”your are looking from the outside in” !  Rejoicing in the invitation to a treasure hunt, I brushed away the leaves, turned the dirt over to discover the connection-Appetite.

What am I hungry for?  What do I crave? My natural man reverberated with the aroma of my fleshly desires.  Praise, respect, notoriety, position, influence, beauty….With each acknowledgement I saw the way they left my soul empty, hungry, famished until I could feel the yearning cry resonate within:  “Nothing satisfies, I am hungry for you God.  I want to be satisfied with you.”

 “They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house, And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.  For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.  Psalm 36: 8-9”

“How do I open my mouth to eat the abundant life?” No sooner had I asked, when the answer was in my mouth:

 ” I am the LORD your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.  Psalm 81:10″

Get out of Egypt.  Out of the darkness. Out of the world into the glorious light.  Out of death, into life.  Any place in my heart that is still in Egypt is a place of hunger, famine, and desolation.  Estranged from the provision of God, shriveled and weak.  My destiny is Canaan, I can’t live in Egypt.  There needs to be a crossing over, here on the shores of my Jordan, I invite his gaze.  Like a helpless baby bird, I am given the picture of my true condition.  Naked, without feathers, in a nest perched upon a precipice totally dependent upon the devoted care of the Watchful One, who neither slumbers nor sleeps. I can’t even feed myself, and I don’t know how to fly.

“Tell me Lord, what doesn’t belong to you?  What have I held back?  What idols are secretly buried under my tent? Where is there darkness in me?  Bring me into the light. Shine your light upon the dark corners of my heart that I might see the way, to everlasting abundant life.  Delighted and satisfied with good things”.Baby-Birds-Dinner-Time-3

 

Hunting For Water

Ancient Hebrew, , , , , , , ,

I opened my heart to the piercing rays of the Beautiful One this morning.  I didn’t mean to, it was just the way the choruses played during our Sunday morning reflection that lulled the guardians to sleep.  He slayed me with one glance of his affection, and that tender way of showing me what is distancing us from intimacy.  I could only look on as my heart listened to the passage from  Joel 2: 12:

“Now, therefore, saith the Lord. Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and mourning.”

I couldn’t move, my eyes were misty riveted to the page.  The NASB says:  ” Return to me”…I know return.  It is a repentance that involves burning your old place of residence in the flesh down, down to the ground below the foundation.  Sowing salt upon that place never to return…leaving nothing to go back to, it is a changing of the kingdom. From darkness into light.  As the Immerser said that fateful day when THE lamb walked upon the shores of the Jordan…”Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

I needed a turning. I was desperately in need of  an exchange in addresses.  I could feel the old key ring jingling the ways to the old house. The house that rejection built.  A strong fortified place of the ” I will nevers, and the they will nevers, ” statements of the soul that  had kept me safe for a long season.  Safe?  I didn’t feel safe.  I felt cold.  That was my statement to the Gardener as we journeyed down the mountain on icy roads to attend an ecclesia that felt like ice to my soul in need of turning.  “I’m wrong inside, I know it, but I can’t fix it”.   His quick glace from the wheel, and gentle answer began a thaw in my posture-

“Faith arises out of our helplessness, faith begins when the grace of God comes, unmerited, unasked for-faith rises to meet that”

I moved further on the page and wondered at the way the light shone around the word ‘fasting’  I could feel the shovel in my hands grow warm as I began to dig past what my mind told me I already understood, furiously turning over the soil of my understanding, frantic lest I remain frozen forever and lose the trace of light promising freedom and restored intimacy with the Keeper of my soul.

Fast-a verb. To abstain from food.

Deeper-

Hebrew:  tsome, from H6684-a fast

As I dug deeper I found in the gallery of the Ancient Hebrew picture language the painting for the condition of my soul. It is the picture of a man laying upon the ground (on a hunt) and the picture for water…it literally means ” the hunt for water”.  To be extremely dry and thirsty is the root word that abstaining from food comes from.  I could hear the sound of the water brook as the doe who was being pursued racing to find the place to shelter her from the attackers, to hide her scent from the enemy and drink of living water. I could feel her heart beating in my chest-

“-As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.” Psalm 42:1

I was feeling thirsty again.  Hungry again.  Longing again to have nothing between us.  I would give up this old house,  this place I had built. I would be called out of UR.  I would journey onward longing for the City, not made with human hands. I would repent, I would receive forgiveness, I would give forgiveness. I would live transparent and vulnerable and I would pant for the water brooks of the river of my God.

This is how I turn.  Empty handed, exposed, helpless.  Faith rises to meet grace. I have only to ask a drink, and believe that living water is my portion.

deer waterbrook

” Jesus answered and said unto unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. John 4:10