Cords of many colours
Some related hubs of mine...
This has been a strange couple of weeks, and writing has been an impossibility as my life has unfurled like the woven threads of a flag that has been windblown, and it certainly has been blown by the winds of both the sea and the Holy Spirit.
In His wisdom God has placed me in a house on the beach and these last weeks there have been severe storms, something which is unusual for southern Spain, even in winter
But the duration of them has been unusual as they have raged over weeks now.
Properly protected in hooded 'fur' anorak and waterproof ski boots the storms have been bearable, even enjoyable, as I walk my dog on the beach, examining what the rivers have flushed into the sea, and the sea has returned to the land.
Searching my soul has always been something reserved for special occasions, when the rug has been pulled from beneath my charmed life.
In my lifetime I have gone from ignorant poverty to self aware wealth without noticing anything or even suspecting that it may not be possible, I have always believed anything is possible and acted accordingly.
Things have always just happened for me, and a good friend once remarked that even when I fall into a pile of shit, I come out smelling of roses.
So hitting a brick wall, in which everything I had as an asset, disappeared in an instance at auction, has been a strange experience, but a valid and worthwhile one, and one from which I have realised that my core values are secure and safe from corruption.
Being nice is easy when life is pleasant, though God knows (and He does) some folk with very pleasant lives still manage to be sour hearted people who seemingly cannot be nice in any circumstances.
I pity them.
Realising that my age and lifestyle was not keeping my blood pressure normal....and indeed my blood pressure rose to dangerous highs, and my 'espino blanco' (white hawthorn) was not bringing it down, no matter what, brought me to the stark reality that I was actually getting old.
There I've said it, OLD, not 'older' in some attempt to salvage some possibility of youth abundant springing forth again, no I said OLD for the simple reason that beyond my own comprehension I seem to have survived to an age that I have considered old in every season of my life.
Nearly sixty has always seemed old to me, and I will not be one of those baby booming idiots who refuses to accept that finally we need to grow up.....
....any longer!
So God has shown me some things, like accepting 'white coat' medicine (which has lowered my blood pressure quickly) is preferable to testing how long it needed to be high to provoke a stroke, heart attack or death.
Like all crisis situations, it has brought about a reconsideration of what's imnportant, to me, to my family and to God.
Of course to make that worthwhile I need to put those priorities in reverse order, with God first, then the family and finally me.
Then I needed to write a letter to my son Jaime, who is in New York working for Metro Ministries and was due to attend an 'encounter' weekend, and we needed to write a letter of 'encouragement' that would be read by him during that weekend.
I can write for you, a faceless audience, a readership of one, and expose my thoughts and deeds with no problem.... but to my wife....or son?
You see writing to people who know you means having to write exposing your self recognised faults, those which normally you would skip over or self justify or simply ignore.
But I have a whole church body of fellow believers who never bothers to read what I write, and there is no reason that they should, they have busy lives and why tax their thinking or belief, they are happy as they are for now.
But interacting with you, my Hub brothers and sisters, has taught me much these last months, as I found that my rock solid beliefs would be challenged by my compatriots and fellow hubbers.
I thank you all, from the atheist hoards to those who hold true faith for honing and sharpening my spiritual weaponry as we learn and debate with each other.
One thing I have always striven to be, since I came to faith, is honest with my family and those around me, and hopefully honest and truthful with the world also.
Being honest really does not come easily to most people.
We are born with a pure spirit, jettisoned into mortality from Gods spiritual nursery, where we were safe and secure, into a life of noise and bustle and corruption all about.
The pure white light of innocence we possess is quickly eroded by the taint of life, as day by day, year by year we become more radiant when we display our true colours, gradually increasing the opacity until we are totally hidden from the purity we once had as a birthright and we are no longer a transparent entity, but one clouded and obscured by the strength of the colours we have assumed.
We become cords of colour holding the very fabric of our society together, and our souls become intertwined with those other colours we tangle with in our lives.
Cords form into twine as we marry, then ropes as we raise children, and stronger ropes as we form friendships and alliances with those we meet.
But those cords gain strength as they progress from new born transparency towards adult obscureness, and as we drift towards darkness, for the absence of light and transparency is darkness, as black is the totality of colour, in the same way that white is the absence of colour.
God showed me that these colours combine with other colours of a likeness, like beads of rain running down a window pane, they gradually conjoin to become a stream of water, each individual, but each blending with the other colours in their trails, until they form one stream.
A cord of colour solid and defined in it's shade, but interacting with other colours as they weave around the cords, with those cords that are more transparent allowing stronger colours to show through, and obscuring or changing the hue as they pass.
Red runs under yellow and blazes as a strong orange for a while, and all the other primaries make the 16.5 million shades between black and white as they move along the journey.
The beads of colour are us, and the strands are our lives, either directed towards Christ, or wending slowly to an inevitable fade to black.
Those who join together and search for Christ will gradually learn to be stripped of strident colours as they become more transparent, eventually merging with the pure light that is Christ as we reach the end of our journey.
Indistinguishable from Him.
Those who keep their colours proudly, maybe changing them like a fashion parade daily, supporting this lie today and holding onto their depth of colour, will eventually merge to the fate of all strong colours lacking transparency, first a dingy brown but finally a dull black.
Darkness.
Indistinguishable from their master.
Suddenly the meaning of Matthew 10:39 became abundantly clear....
"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."
Looking at my shortfalls is hard but essential, for in the recognition of our error we find the pathway to our eternity, as we become more transparent even with ourselves.
Not lying to ourselves is a major crossroads of belief, which we need to reach is we are to start becoming transparent.....which we must do if we are to lose 'us' to gain Him
