Love Notes

Based on Psalm 119:73-80, 1 Timothy 5:1-25, Proverbs 27:243-27, Jeremiah 37:1 -38:28.

GOD, You are our provision, our clothing, our food and nourishment -- our sufficiency -- and we are blessed indeed to belong to You, strengthened to hope in Your Word and to know that Your judgments are right. Thank You for the afflictions You have allowed in our lives, for they have produced the consolations of Christ. 

Now we are diligent to know the state of our "flocks and herds" -- that, in You, we shall have enough and be blameless in Your eyes, no matter the lies of those who have treated us wrongfully with falsehood. For we meditate on Your precepts, and You turn to us, letting our hearts be blameless in order that we may not be ashamed.

I remember being retrieved from the dungeon and the mire. I remember that You sent thirty people, who made ropes from their "dirty linen" and lowered those ropes down, way down,  to where I was stuck in the muck. And they pulled me up! With their ropes of rags! And they lifted me out of the dungeon, out the the darkness, into You! Into the Light! 

Now I live in Your Light, O Christ, speaking as best I can into a world that refuses You and  and does not wish to learn that Your judgments are right. Let Your merciful kindness retrieve them, for they do not fear You, but neither did I until You came and opened the eyes of my heart. May they see their need to heed Your Word, O LORD, and to surrender to Your power. May they, like us, escape from the mire, retrieved by ropes of rags! May we pull them up and out of their dungeons! Your Power is what we need' therefore, we surrender to Your power -- in faith, believing in You, through whom all things are possible. For this we thank You, even now, as we live in Christ He in us, forever!

This photograph is by Kristofer Rowe.