Again we come

Ah, the coffee pot is bubbling, the air outside is near perfect with a slice of cool lingering. The sun is rising, the music playing. I'm back in my element.

I've spent a lifetime in a spiritual retreat this past weekend, capping months of spiritual retreating, er, so to speak. I've sought the Lord, and as everyone knows I suspect, the Bible says whomever seeks the Lord will find the Lord.

Hence: I've found Him. I've found that He is as elusive as ever, when I call him. When I call to Him, however, I think He has smiled and said, "Come on, walk with me near the lake as the sun climbs above those clouds and those red and purple stripes begin to shrink like your worries."

So, I, uh, we do.

And I'm refreshed in a sort of exhausted manner.

I'm told I can't tell anyone about where I've been or what I've done or whom I've done it with, which sounds suspiciously like my time in the 70s, but I digress. What I did was move one step closer to a Lord who never moves, but beckons. Where I was was the garden where we could talk among those newly bursting flowers that smelled of spring a long time ago when I was young and my parents doted on me. Whom I did it with was you, everyone, some of the sweetest searchers I've ever come across. People who gave of themselves in ways they thought not possible.

And what did I learn? I learned to trust again, or for the first time. To simply give it all to the one who loves me, ME, most. More than spouse, children, the grands, my dogs. He loves me because I'm me. The thing in me I distrust, the thing in me I dislike, He washes as if soiled clothes and he shows me off to the world as spotless. No distrust any longer. It's wiped away by a doting parent who uses grace as a cleanser and love as a towel.

I read from the Message this morning as love and time permits: "Watch closely. I'm laying a foundation in Zion, a solid granite foundation, squared and true. And this is the meaning of the stone: A TRUSTING LIFE WON'T TOPPLE."

I've been handed the stone. The Bible goes on: "I'll make justice the measuring stick and righteousness the plumb line for building. A hailstone will knock down the shantytown of lies, and a flash flood will wash out the rubble."

Lord, we come, again.