the power of touching.

I repeat the mantra a bazillion times during the evening.  I'm just learning. I don't take faces, no worries I didn't get you, smile and nod. No, I have no plans for the images that God paints in front of me. 

I silently pray between the "asks."  

Meet me, open my eyes, let me see You

I say aloud to her. "I just want to be good at something." 

She says at least 10 times back,  "You are good."  

I sink back into that paradigm every time. Not good enough, Not worthy to behold such glory.

Glory that He gives. Glory that I want to capture every time I pick up my camera. Skills desired, to show this image consumed culture what He really looks like. The Word in pictures, and I feel like I fail.. again and again.

Meet me. Let me see. Open my eyes.

Looking into creation that He calls "very good."  Tender songs from a God that loves."Open your eyes, child.. I am here." echo in my ear.  I laugh and joke around, but my heart is in search for that one moment where God shouts.. "Over here! I want you to see this!!"

With one touch He opens my eyes. With a touch reminded again that it's I in need of His touch.

"Someone touched me, 

for I perceive that power has gone out of me."

Luke 8:46

 I stare, wide eyed open into the power of touch, and it consumes me, and I find myself silently changing my prayers to the God that touches.

"Touch them like they are touching others."  

When you are touched.. you can't help but touch others. My old paradigm melts back into that place where it belongs.. and I know I've beheld Glory, touched.

ShineFest is a community network of churches and businesses

 dedicated to improving our community

 in an act of Christian unity and love. 

It's this network that touches because they have been Touched.

repainting the frontline.

Physically there, I had just peeled off all my layers

 after running outside for the first time this year. 

Tired, weary, and sweaty. I sit and join the front line. 

A man walks in carrying a stick, but it  morphs into a sword in my eyes.

 A sword of Truth. 

He speaks, and my senses perk.

 Calling others to a battle, his voice is louder than I have ever heard him use. 

Authority.

 God given Words, edging their way into my thoughts and I sit captivated.

 We converse. 

Speaking of the Holy, meditating on Him who is in us.  

He fills the canvas.

 A canvas that had been standing empty confident bare.

I leave after just the first hour, filled. 

I giggle aloud in the car on the way home

 if I come to the frontline for Him, or if He comes for me.

The conversation between God and I continues in the wee hours of the morning.

"So the sword is given to be polished, 

that it may be grasped in the hand. 

It is sharpened and polished

 to be given in the hand of the slayer."

Ezekiel 21:11a

Prayer: words that give evil motivation to move out.

 I am a slayer. A Warrior. 

I defeat evil with confidence.

and He gets all the glory... again. 

unfolding of a cornerstone.

I stepped across the threshold and I was immediately taken back to high school. The building back then  was a Christian book store and almost every payday I'd jump in my Ford Escort and head to the big city to find a new tape. Music, full of words that drenched my soul in Him. The place where I was standing now, is that place. And I feel Him unfold my thoughts as I fumble with my lens, trying so hard to be good at something.. capturing light in a dark place. 

It's there, in this building that I meet the men that He has chosen to carry the torch forward, and I am in awe of the sparkle of light that I catch in their eyes. Men that see through the darkness surrounding them, wanting once again to offer the Light to souls who come to the city for nourishment. 

I fail miserably at capturing the light with my lens,  but is that my purpose? 

I had come to capture what was in that building. The before. The Light.  

I had come to capture the Word. 

"The unfolding of your words gives light; 

it imparts understanding to the simple." 

 Psalm 119:130

I discover that the Word made flesh is right before my eyes. He has come and the building is twitching with excitement.  Yes, it's in need of great repair. A total makeover. But isn't that what's needed whenever the Word becomes new? 

A fresh drenching of the Light. Washing clean what once was. Giving understanding to the people who thirst. The Word, casting Light in the darkness. It's what captures me. 

And I find myself, bubbling over with anticipation of what will come of this Light to this city, and I want to capture every moment of the transformation. To become part of the movement to establish a place that enables ordinary folks to see, feel, and live in the Light. A place where souls are cared for, tenderly and prayerfully. A place where folks learn to live in the Light.

This building, it's holy ground, and as I walk around, carefully stepping in the darkness that surround me I'm certain I hear God's whisper..

"This Cornerstone.. it's Mine, and I'm drenching it in my Word."

risky business.

You get to start with this perfect untouched canvas, and you paint it white. Then you are told step by step how to paint like the master himself, Bob Ross. Tap, tap, tapping your way to what was supposed to become beauty. Every time your brush or that silly butter knife thingy hit the canvas you committed to doing something with the paint.. to form it into something. It was risk upon risk, piled right on top of each other until the Bob Ross in you was showing for all the world to see. 7 hours later, famished and full of oil paint from your head to your toes.. you emerge as a graduate of your very first oil painting experience.


"My soul clings to the dust;

give me life according to your word!"

Psalm 119:25

When you emerge and show people your fruit of the last 7 hours.. they are amazed. "You really did that?"

Yes, and it was easy.. except that it wasn't.

It's the risk upon risk.

The moments when you have to commit to stepping into the Master's plan... you lose all control, and you know it. You know that there is dust left from just living the life you have always known.. why on earth would you want to ruin anything as beautiful as God's canvas with the dust from your messed up life.

 

But the painting won't get painted without the brush you hold in your hand. The Word that He put there for you to use. It's a huge risk, to lose all control, to abandon what you know and lose yourself in His Plan. To gather enough courage and confidence from Him to commit to painting a new picture.

  A picture that He allows us to sign,

so that when other people look at it  they ask,"You really did that?"
and you get to tell them.. "Nope, God did."
 and you hand them them a brush....