About a garden

That inner spiritual center – a garden, a place of potent peace and tranquility, a place where the Spirit of God comes to make self-disclosure, to share wisdom, to give affirmation or rebuke, to provide encouragement, and to give direction and guidance.  A quiet place where there is the absence of busyness, the defiling noise, of confusion.

This quote is from a book I am currently reading called Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald and it reminded me of the following:

Many years ago at a conference the speaker asked us to image our inner lives as a garden. We were to ask Jesus to come in and to allow Him to pull out the weeds.  It has always stuck with me, the image I had of Him joyfully, and with get abandon, pulling out the weeds and tossing them aside.  As I remember there was quite a lot of work for Him to do, and He was tireless in His efforts.  There was such a sense of rejoicing.  He and I both found such pleasure in uprooting and getting rid of the weeds so that my garden could produce the fruit for which it was intended.

Today, while there is still work to be done, there is that place of peace and tranquility, a place of quiet confidence and rest.  I am so very blessed in knowing that my life is in His hands. That my garden is being tended to by The Great Gardener.

A memory

Several times lately I have been reminded of a time, a long time ago, when I hit the wall and broke down in tears, deep soul wrenching tears as I sat on the floor of the chapel at Holy Comforter Church.  I remember one of the things I was aware of was to avoid false Jesuses.  I became aware that many would “come in His name” but there is only One true Jesus and I wanted desperately to make sure He was the one I followed. 

I remember too at that moment recalling a scene in Hinds Feet, where Much Afraid is climbing the mountain, alone. It’s storming around her and she’s clinging to the cleft in the rock.  The Shepherd comes to her and asks something like – what if all the promises weren’t true, would you still follow me?  And her response is “yes” and I realized that would be my response as well.  Because He is so much more that the promises.  He is love and all that is good and right, it’s not about what He gives, but Who He is.

I know I’m not all that He has called me to be, at least not yet, but I am so confident in His love that I can keep climbing.  I have come to know that His Spirit is strong in me – that has nothing to do with me but all because of Him.  I don’t know why He has chosen me, there are so many who are so much “bigger” than I am, so much “more” than I am but that doesn’t seem to matter to Him – He just loves me and I am so very grateful and will continue to rejoice in His amazing love.

Some thoughts regarding washing feet

The secret to harmony and unity is learning, practicing and accepting the washing of one another’s feet.

He/Judas took the sop from Jesus' hand, and that was the final chance he had. When he did, Satan entered into him, and Judas was no longer his own master in any degree at all. . . Jesus sacrificed himself in order to save his disciples; Judas sacrificed Jesus in order to save himself. Those two philosophies dominate the world today.

Is there, then, a point of no return?

In this final appeal, Jesus is directing a word to the holders of the two basic attitudes present, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives any one whom I send receives me." That is a word to the disciples, and to us, that when someone comes to us to wash our feet, to help us with some problem of sin or error in our life, we are to remember that this person is sent by Jesus. Therefore it is Jesus himself who is standing before us. It is he who is offering to wash our feet. And we are not to resent this kind of ministry on the part of others. We are not to say, "You have no right to come to me. This is my own private affair; you have nothing to do with it." But we are to remember that "He who receives any one whom I send," Jesus says, "receives me." Let us not, like Peter, fall into the error of rejecting the indispensable ministry of cleansing which Jesus offers. (Stedman)

Often times that “someone” that Jesus sends is His Spirit, although He is always at work – when He reveals our wrong, our sin, through our conscience and gives us the opportunity and the privilege of repenting and “receiving” Jesus (of having our feet washed).

(As an aside, in typing this out I at first typed “repeating” rather than “repenting”.  What a difference one letter can make – there’s a lesson there, not sure just what it is though.)