It Starts Small

Sounds like a good time? I was sitting in a quiet place. I had read several times that we need to not only ask God for things. We needed to give space in our quiet time to allow him to speak to us.

If you all could be a fly in my mind…. “Be still….” That’s like giving a cat a bath. I have an extremely hard time sitting in quiet. Praying is hard work. I can’t tell you the numerous times I’m standing in the throne room of God speaking with him, and my mind suddenly wonders. I’ll be praying over something and out of nowhere pizza comes to mind. Before too long I realize I’m thinking about pizza and no longer speaking to God. I’d like to think he gets a chuckle out of it. He knows me….ALL of me.

The junkyard. I got a sense it was time to visit the junkyard. It had changed a lot since it was swept away in that storm. The walls were gone. I felt insecure. There was, open in plain sight. I didn’t like it. It had been moved from that nasty rowboat to an island. The walls were gone. Standing there looking at the heaps and piles I felt so small. There were piles of rubble stacked higher than skyscrapers. it felt impossible. I felt panic well up inside me. There’s no way I was going to get through all this. There was just too much.

I looked at it and told myself, this is a mess. A quiet voice made me half jump out of my body and replied, yes, this is a mess. My Savior was there with me. I halfway chuckled. I felt scared looking at the miles long rows of tall stacks of junk and rubble. I didn’t now why I feared just looking at the mess. Honestly I just wanted to run from it.

I asked, can’t we just pour gasoline on it? Light it on fire and be done with this? My Savior took my hand and put something in it and closed my hand around it. He spoke, I am the gasoline and God your Father is the fire. He closed his hands around my hand and said, Fear not I am with you. It begins here. I opened my hand and there was that little piece of junk Jesus has pulled from my box, but some how it was different. It wasn’t so jagged. It was almost like a stone that had gone through the rough grit stage. That small quiet voice spoke: Go to Texas.

The blaring of sirens shook me from my quiet place. Ohhhhh…. What did all that mean? I laugh now. When the kids and I are doing a devotion or just sharing it always comes down to that phrase:

What does it all mean? 😩 <— I’m certain that’s the face we all make.

Several things stood out: fear not, the stone I was holding in my hand, gasoline, fire and Texas.

Jesus was the gasoline. I repeated this many times over. What is gasoline? Ok, obviously it’s a fluid the truck devoured that had recently become extremely costly to buy. No, stupid, what is Gasoline? It’s an accelerant when combined with fire. You throw it down first and with the strike of a match something explodes into…. Wait a minute. It’s Jesus!!! Jesus was the accelerant to illuminating God my Father, as he spoke. I was the match. I was choosing to to look upon the rubble. He was going to show me what I needed to know, and then God my Father would bring his cleansing, healing fire.

Could it really be that simple? Jesus was going to reveal and my Father in Heaven was going to heal me and cleans me? It can’t be that simple, can it? Here was my first recognized weakness: doubt followed by over thinking.

What about that rock? What did Jesus mean by fear not? What is fear? And let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Texas. What does this all mean? 😩 I had just gotten to Pennsylvania. I was still recovering physically. That word just kept burning in my chest. Texas. I wasn’t against the idea. I love my sister and would love to see her and spend time with her, but now. It’s only been two weeks. I felt this weight and heaviness I needed to quit wasting time and get to Texas or some how I’d miss the purpose.

So…. I started laying out another trip.