Starbean

I have been thinking of how the coffee bean produced Starbucks.  I cannot think of another seed that is responsible for the growth of a corporate empire.  Beans are magic.  Jack and the Bean Stalk come to mind.  But to grow one of the greatest global empires is some track record.  Beans and seeds, underrated miracles of Divine proportion, and the coffee bean seem to be king of the bean hill.  If you know of a seed of a similar pedigree, please comment below.  I’ve already thought of cocoa and Hershey's.

A Morning Psalm of Thanksgiving

Morning's first light awakens the soul as surely as the infant's first breath swells the body to his first awakening on earth.  Oh, to capture the first exhaled breath would be to own a treasure paling even the sun.  For life is the entry to life eternal which the sun only lights the first step.  God who lit the first, alone lights the rest.   

I have seen thousands and thousands of first lights.  
A gift I was given by genetics of an early riser.  God, however, 
made me look for it as I look for Him.

  

The Party Is Never Over

The party’s over.  our family stayed up late amid all that glittered and was golden, tightening the ties that bind.  The party’s over.  We will use all points of the compass to go our own way today.  The miles ever trod will be trodden again.  I have never been a part of any other family, the one dealt was the hand to work with.  But we are good, harnessed well, yoked easy.  We are a party, know how to party, throw the party, and are each the life of the party.  We learn early on what it means to be the center of attention.  For good or bad we love being on stage, encourage it, expect it, demand it.  We dance, sing, write, create, teach, and heal, all to our family’s audience.  We are raucous at the dancing two-year-old, the solving of Goldman Sachs issues, and the newest salvation.  We love a good fall and summit.  We are dog people, horse people, and wild animal lovers, we have love to spare.  But the party’s over.  In the quite early morning, I can already see eyes glistening, ready for coming years, the laughs, the tears, the hero’s past, present, and being made, the walkers with God.  We have the gift of tarrying because with every moment squeezed empty confirms what we all know.  Our party is never over, the Tie that Binds is responsible for our here and our forevermore.  The Party’s On!!!  

Christmas 2022, 19 loved ones, 5 dogs, and 1 cat.

 

Away Over Jordan's Stormy Banks

I was sitting quietly in my son’s guest room on Christmas morning.  I had read the Ancient Text beginning poignantly on the 23 Psalm.  I had read Lewis and Keller.  Prayed.  Written and still, our home was quiet.  I opened the blinds to see dawn come and begin to just be with Him.  I am tired of faith.  Really growing weary of the ongoing imagination of Jesus.  The Spirit’s stirring in me a mix of hope, longing, and doubtful wandering.  Faith is all we have.  There is nothing but a memory now.  I am growing ever more dependent upon The Spirit to keep up my lagging faith.  I imagine this is The Way.  The Way of our daily borne cross which in the end leads to a dying of seeming forsakenness while all the while our faith’s Object is carrying us away over Jordan’s stormy banks.    

A Longing Always Filling

I am very glad the day is here.  I tend to make it about too many other things trying to capture the one thing, you.  Trying to have the feeling.  To capture something dear, innocent and worth longing for.  But Father your son came, 2000 years ago he came, and now we are left with the hope, the memory, the record.  But the real thing is the hope of it happening again, you coming again.  You coming in glory.  Then it will change to us going, us being made complete, us being transformed into glorious personhood.  Perfection.  All longing filling.  Not to a longing fulfilled but a longing always filling.  The joy of always being with you, seeing you, working in your kingdom.  The forever ecstasy of fulfilling.  The working out successfully of whatever our hearts, minds, and hands put themselves to.  Always leaning in well.  To be a part of your work, eternal, time no more, no hurry, no pushing forward, no growing old, no limits of imagination.  

God when one begins to write about the expectancy of you coming again and what that means it leads to an opening view that slowly ceases to materialize.  We run out of descriptions.  We are left with inadequate imaginations.  And then our writing turns to one letter at a time as we try to think the unthinkable.  Glory Halleluiah.  Us with You in paradise.  What?  Unimaginable Filling! 

Merry Christmas Father.

Communion and Candle Light Service last night with
all 19 of us.  A hint of the longing always filling.

  

 

Finding Your Socks in Your Underwear Drawer

My Christmas spirit is beginning to wane.  I don’t know why.  I am faithfully doing Advent, buying gifts for family, giving generously to the needy, and watching all the Christmas movies.  I continue to read the Bible, go to church, and remind myself repeatedly to remember who Christmas is about.  But it's fading.  I have begun to see its end and the day after and know it will swiftly pass away, followed quickly by New Year’s Eve, and 2022 will close with its Christmas past and 2023 will begin with its hustle and bustle.  My days seem to pass with a vague sense of searching for something, but I don’t know what.  Like I am missing something but not something particular that I sweep the house clean looking.  More like a feeling of, a sense of, something I own but can’t possess.  I am once again at this story, got to the last sentence yesterday and laid it down without a settled end.  After re-reading I now realize it is not that I have lost something but that I myself am lost, always feeling a bit misplaced, as if I have been put here but not where I belong.  I am not losing the Christmas spirit but am not wholly with the Christmas Child.  Until I am fully, physically as well as spiritually, with Him, I am miss-placed.  Not lost only mislaid, like finding your socks in your underwear drawer.  

      

That Tug in Your Heart is the Christmas Blood

A great gathering is coming.  I can already feel the rising swell of family blood being drawn together as we prepare for our journey over the hill and through the woods.  Christmas is about many things including one new baby child come to be a brother to many and Lord of all.  But mainly Christmas is about the blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins which now rises in the just and the unjust drawing all together for a momentary global gathering.  There is a lot of noise leading up to the gathering much like long ago as people uprooted from their lives were forced to their ancestorial homes, where their blood came from, which now flowed through them.  The blood in this story flowed from a King, David, and before him from Adam, Eden, and then from the Great Beyond.  

I saw a tugboat early this dark morning.  It was heading east groaning under its great burden all decked out in its traveling colors, royal colors of Christmas, blue for the King, red for His blood.  Yes, the tide is gathering, and the world is slowly turning to one quiet dawn when we will all once again gather according to the blood that flows in us.  Some the blood of their ancestors and some the blood of their Savior but all because of the blood of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  And we will peer down into a manger and behold the baby filled with the blood in which we lose all our guilty stains.  

The tug.