DALET: When i was young i dreamed of doors and windows of all different kinds.

Dreams of doors in black and white,
often in color
fuzzy and clear
sometimes faded,
seemingly saturated, and over-pixilated.

Most of the time i was outside, observing…
In other dreams i was inside looking out beveled door glass as the world went by outside.

Some were like castle doors,
some ornate doubles,
others like hall doors neatly in a short row,
or a simple entrance with side lights.

There was, though, a consistent door.
It was cut so small
in the wall,
it was lonely looking, but yet,
i could smell wildflowers at the threshold.

i liked the way the wood felt under my hands. It had beautiful carved medallions cut-in at the middle head, and high on the left and right jambs.
i often knew the door, but couldn’t think how i knew the door, or what it meant.

Sometimes in the dreams i would just stand in front of that humble little door, with its smell of wildflowers, feeling the ground under my feet. i had the idea there was a garden on the other side, but didn’t know how to enter.

There was no knob to pivot, and no hinges to swing.
i would often wake up with the smell of wildflowers still in my nose,
wondering what sort of strange dream that was…”

*            *          *         *

What Lies Beyond The Door
     by Jean Louis Mondon
While I was still dreaming
Contemplating the blushing dawn,
My Father, the Master Gardener
Drawing me from my sleep
Invited me to step beyond,
The threshold into the deep.
With a Word of his mouth
and a twinkle in his eye,

Come with me to my garden…
We will stroll down the path
where the cool breeze
Exhales its subtle perfume
Splashing the light
Dispersed in diaphanous tones.

Together we will rejoice walking
On this earth, your temporary home
My good and beautiful creation

Behold, the most exquisite flower
One that grows toward the sun
Of a matchless love
In Jesus Christ my beloved Son

The soft warmth of the rays
Emanating from his eyes
Filled with mercy and compassion
Calls the humble and contrite at heart
Even the most broken: “Come and rest in me.”

Its fragile beauty will never fade
But dying, bears lasting fruit in its season
For the spring of life that feeds her
Never, ever runs dry.

In the last years there has arisen a resurgence in interest concerning the supernatural. Kids cartoons are no longer kids cartoons….watch and see for yourself….most of the “cartoons” involve superpowers being used or invoked somehow with the implication that it is the person who is supernatural and possesses powers beyond regular people. Also, it seems a lot of people are interested in demons, witches, spiritualists, and other occult phenomena. Here’s a good question to answer to ourselves: Why is it easier for people to believe in the power of the devil and evil than it is to believe in God? Those demonic images seen in horror movies? Where did people get the idea that’s how it all looks? Who told them that? Where did they get their information?

As pertaining to faith, one big difference between natural faith as the world sees it and the Holy Spirit gift of faith is between that which is bound by the limits of this world…. in contrast to the substance of belief in the sphere and domain that is above and beyond the reach of what is found in simple nature. Our faith in Christ is supernatural in and of itself without even speaking of the gift of faith for miracles, it is above and beyond the reach of what is found in the world around us.

At the heart of faith is the idea of certainty and firmness. Faith means not seeing in order to believe, but resting in the strong arms of a parent who supports the child.
The very root Hebrew word for good faith is the word Amen or ah-man, which we use often meaning truly, steady handed, on good footing, and high fidelity.
The Lord and His faithfulness is the pillar which we the children of God rely on. The same Hebrew word used of believing and trusting God is the same word used in 2Kings18:16 for pillars, which paints a picture of faith as a pillar which supports the house. And maybe that is what is alluded to in Isaiah7:9 when Isaiah spoke the word of the Lord saying “if you will not believe and trust the Lord, then you haven’t got a leg to stand on” (my paraphrase). Unless we stand firm in our faith in God, we are unstable and on poor footing….or “not a leg to stand on” as Eugene Peterson puts it.

In John11:43, Jesus called out, “Lazarus, come out of there!” Even though Lazarus had been dead and was decomposing in a hole in the ground, life came back to his body and he was restored. He came out still wrapped in the grave clothes, only now, by the power of the Lord, he was alive. Many believed in Jesus that day. !But! in an unbelievable display of hard heartedness, and overwhelming blindness there were others who ran to tell the Jewish leaders what happened, like a bunch of childish tattle tales, possibly for the reason of gaining favor with the local leadership: “Rabbi, Rabbi! Jesus is down there raising the dead! What will you do Rabbi, this is really scary?” “Just go home to your family little flock, we will take care of it. Lock your doors and windows and rest assured we’ve got it all handled. Thank you for your time, we will consider your report carefully.”

…. rather than acknowledge their unstable ways, they renewed their efforts to kill Jesus. To me, that is simply amazing. Jesus told Martha in John11:40 that if she believed, she would see the glory of God. From what He said, we can surmise that believing results in seeing. Verses 45-46 reveals there were others who witnessed the same incredible miracle and did not believe. Seeing is NOT believing, believing is seeing, because, again, if we don’t stand firm on our faith in Christ, the truth, is we don’t have a leg to stand on.

The fact that we believe God and take Him to be faithful and true is, in itself, supernatural. Our faith is because of God and not based simply on events that are experiential. You know, even if people don’t believe God it doesn’t mean He isn’t who He is, it just means they don’t believe Him and don’t have a leg to stand on. We believe Him against all odds; we believe Him when things don’t go well; we believe Him when what we thought would happen didn’t; we believe Him when life is good and when it’s not. There is the substance of certainty in us which testifies of God’s reliability, causing us to be sure, and we know that we know that in Him we are established. We are stable and always have a leg to stand on because He is stable and is firm in His footing.
Heb11:1 says that faith is a substance, it is the evidence of things not seen. As much as my flesh may scream that what i believe is not real, my heart says my faith is strong and sturdy. The Greek word for “substance” means the “concrete essence or reality, and assurance”, and the word “evidence”, means the proof and conviction.
Here’s a sticky statement:
Faith is our woven together material composing the concrete essence and conviction of reality.

Our faith is real and productive….and according to Heb11:1, our faith is actually the greater reality…it is no rainbow illusion or a fancy daydream. It is the reality of all realities, so much so, our lives have been reshaped around our faith, causing us to align with the divine.

Ahhh, but faith, supernatural faith, as spoken of in 1Cor12 is hidden in us like “leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”, the more we do it, the more we do it until eventually, that supernatural mode of operation is just the way we are…..i can no more stop being supernatural than i could decide to not look like myself anymore.

At the heart of faith is the idea of certainty and firmness….. and the sound of faith is the sound you make before you actually make a sound….it is about intent, how you lean in your heart toward God. From faith comes a flowing fountain of wisdom, making us stand up right before God. Friends, by faith the glory of God is in us, when we speak we have weight, and without faith in the Son of God, our words are like voices in a vacuum, and everybody knows sound does not travel in a vacuum. Sound in a vacuum is something so faint it doesn’t even cast a shadow…that’s us without faith, weaker than shadows with not a leg to stand on.

Without Christ in our lives, we are like once beautiful stars which are no longer part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of time and a world which doesn’t care.
Without Christ in our lives it’s as if we are repeatedly slapped down by the violence of circumstance, and there, left bleeding in a sad lonely place, we are trying desperately to get a little recognition to validate us in hopes someone will hear ….it’s like trying to catch the tail of a comet.
Without Christ in our lives, we are left as only an image with no reflection, no longer a light, glimmering like a beacon of hope in the dark, but only a weightless inkling, a faint shadow, lost in lightless gloom.
We need a cornerstone in our lives, without which we are part of a crooked building whose walls tip, sag, and lean, out of plumb and out of level from it’s beginning, destined to collapse under the weight of it’s own wrongness. We need right definitions for words like prosperity and peace, by which only come from the standard of the Cornerstone, the Keystone, and the Champion, Jesus Christ, the Lord God from whom all blessings flow.
We can all think a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of paths and pavements between sun up and sun down. There’s a whole lotta thinking going on. For many of us who remember the God-moments of our lives, in those moments, memory, once again, becomes reality, and for those of us who have come home and rejoined the stars in the sky, our resolve to continue our relentless pursuit of Jesus can instantly be as clear as stars on a warm summer night.
Without Christ, life is built on the fading and passing away. God invented the idea of a corner and the nail. Had He not created the concept of a corner, all lines would just run into the distance, unswerving; had He not created the idea of a nail, our hopes and dreams would find no purchase to grip and remain. On Calvary’s hill, the blood of Jesus ran into every corner of the cross, and with each nail in His limbs, our salvation was made possible. The corners were small but they gave us something to brace against, and the nails, the littles that held much, paved the road for us to come home.
God, in His wisdom and kindness, saw that mankind needed the idea of a corner to brace against, and that of a nail, the little which holds much….His being our cornerstone means those who are the fallen sparks can come home and be part of the sky again, we can stop and breath and smell and listen again, all in the presence of the Lord who makes all things new as spoken of in Rev21:5. The cornerstone says to write His words down because they are trustworthy and true…. and to “write them down” doesn’t mean we jot them out on a scrap of paper to come back at some imaginary time in the future and ponder them….it means to “think on these things”, study what is trustworthy and true to understand and get the words of our Keystone and Champion down in our heart and head.
Upon becoming part of the sky again, our feet are settled on stone, squared by the standard, made plumb and level by One who is higher than ourselves, we stand no longer on shifting sands of wishful thinking, no longer swept away by some distant, laughing ghost of a fading dream without God.”

c

Be kind to yourself…..the Lord not only calls us to be kind to our neighbor, but also to ourselves. Think about it: if you had a friend who spoke to you the same way you speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend? So many of us are very unkind to ourselves…..we condemn ourselves in the mirror with demeaning names which no one hears but us. God doesn’t talk to you that way, so, why do you? Maybe some of us have an attitude that says, “if i were God, i wouldn’t like me either”….but that’s not what the Lord does….He is kind and His kindness changes us.

Jesus is the completion of redemption, and the balance of reconciliation, He has been speaking to you before you knew it was Him speaking to you. He is the One who gives us images to familiarize us with Himself. He is God who whispers us to sleep when we are restless, then rustles His God-fingers against the earth until it rains love in our lives, making wet parched hearts to sing again, even in the moments when we would have preferred to stop living.

i got a phrase of this from somewhere, don’t know where, i just jotted down the rhyming rhythm on a slip of paper.

Even in all our mundane ways, we shall know God. His whispers invite us in closer to Him, hearing with greater exactness, to not be satisfied sitting at a distance from Him….He whispers, words low to the ground which are our resolution to key decisions, little words which nudge our rescue from dark nights of the soul, promptings which inspire us to grow up…..they echo down the long hall between the shadow of conflict and peace, uncovering and healing our disgraces which are felt but rarely expressed.

Both “joy” and “happy” have a fire in them. Happy is a blessedness in our head, meaning it is a subjective word. Happy has to do with intent and posture, and depends on external circumstances.
“Joy” also has a flame, but it’s a word of internal life and grace, divine breath, and light. It is an internal blessedness which rises from our insides. Nehemiah 8:10, “…joy of the Lord”.