Up the Sunbeam

-- I was stunned at the force of the indignant pride that rushed through me. I was frustrated, feeling disrespected, insulted, and unjustly attacked in an area where I (sad to say) like to pride myself. How dare she?!!! Like the Ashnola River swollen to a boiling fury that belies the bitter cold of the water that courses through its rocky canyon in spring, my heart was boiling with ice-cold, debris-laden haughtiness. The details of what precipitated this reaction are not important at all, and they aren't the reason I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all week. I have been over it countless times in my head, and although I know, in all truthfulness, that I DID nothing wrong, I also know that the thoughts and feelings that were churning around in me were arrogant and uncharitable . . . and altogether unbecoming in a heart where Jesus lives. As soon as that surge of pride hit me, it was like I had suddenly stumbled into a vat of toxic waste. It was repugna...

--   " Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter.  The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking ' But I never knew before.  I never dreamed . . .'"   C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Letter XV      Some quotes, like this one from one of the world's greatest storytellers, C. S. Lewis, grab your attention, won't let go, and yet remain a mystery. I have found myself drawn to this one, so much so that without trying to memorize it, the words stay in my heart and ring softly once in awhile like a breeze-kissed wind chime when I think I get just the faintest  glimmer of it. In the span of a mere 250 pages of a book I've been meaning to read and finally got around to, the mystery is solved, and gone is the pride that kept it hidden from me. I think I really thought I knew God . . . at least well enough to have a pretty fixed picture of Him. I don't mean I thought I comprehended all of Him, clearly that...

-- If you'd like, you're welcome to read Part 1 and Part 2 first.  =) Welcome (or welcome back) to my ongoing conversation on the popular Christian concept of brokenness . I am so glad you're here and look forward to your reflections and input!  I hope you will look up the scriptures I have linked to throughout this post so you can further your own exploration of what I have to share here! I have continued to study and pray and contemplate many things I have heard and read. It is a challenge to pin down a clear and particular definition and application of brokenness .  It is a word much-used by modern Christians and theologians, many with renowned names you would readily recognize with respect, but it isn't a word I've been able to find frequently in Scripture, and certainly not with all the meanings it wears now! This word bothers me . . . at least some uses of it bother me. Am I being rebellious? Stubborn? Obtuse? Unspiritual? Foolish? I hope not. ...

-- Standing atop the very spine of North America, the Continental Divide, I drink in the majesty of what for me, is an always-place.  This view, these rocks, this air runs through my life like a favorite melody that recurs again and again in a movie soundtrack.  It's a place I always seem to go back to, a place I never get tired of, a place I miss deeply when I'm far away. High places are always like that for me. I have never met a mountain I didn't love --the higher and more jagged and snow-covered, the better.  Shimmering with an unearthly glory, mountains are rife with evidence of an all-powerful and monumentally grand Creator-God . I am only one of the more than 3 million people who visit these mountains in a year.  Whether they know it or not . . . whether they recognize Him or not . . . each and every one, in some way, feels God on those heights. Ancient people felt God's presence on high places too. Sadly, though they felt Him on peaks and high mou...