Kept in Embracing Love

To be kept by God!  A powerful concept that can influence a life by living in that reality.  What does it mean to be kept?  It implies in simple meaning to be held, sustained, preserved and saved.  The very notion of being kept has the connotation of ownership. Some rebel at that idea because our very nature does not like to be owned by anything or anyone.

It is amazing that God in His infinite knowledge, knew His own before they ever came into existence. He knew who would turn to him and who would seek to become His own.  It is a refuge to be kept by God as we journey through a world that has chaos and rebellion.  It is a spiritual oasis where we are refreshed and nourished in His embracing love, forgiveness, grace, mercy, peace where joy, hope and healing are found.  Our souls become soothed and infused in new life.

In the photo below, the sky was full of billowing clouds illuminated by the sun breaking through the formation. If you look closely, you will see the sun as a round orb encased in blue with surrounding light.  It was awesome to actually see the sun without being blinded by its light.  It also was a reminder that God draws us out of blindness to be kept by His illuminating Light in the navigation of life.

Thank you dear Lord for Your protective and keeping power, both known and unknown - spiritually, physically and in the deepest part of our soul.  I am grateful that we are each called to be Your own.... that is Your will.  We only need to respond out of our will in saying yes back to You.

The Silent Ones

I begin anew, with my first post of 2020.  I have titled it 'The Silent Ones' in consideration of the multitudes of humanity - man, woman and child - across the face of the globe over thousands of centuries.  The Silent Ones are those we never heard of and yet have left their footprints of indelible destiny in the navigation of civilization throughout the course of time. We have cultural differences but within the human heart; we share the same emotions in love, fear, happiness, grief, to name a few.  Our faces can hold smiles and they can shed tears.  We know emotional pain through loss and physical pain through adversities. We know hunger and thirst and we know the nourishment of food and drink.  We know the feeling of attraction and repulsion.  Some know poverty and some know riches.  We bleed the same color, we breathe the same air and we enter and exit this world the same way.

The Silent Ones go on to make their contributions to society and make history without any fanfare.  They obey their elders in youth and obey the law of the land as adults.  They pay taxes, go to work every day and struggle within the confines of jobs and money.  Some go to war and experience kill or be killed.  Some pray for peace with unwavering faith in a wavering world.  Some reverence God and country and some profane the same.  Some know freedom and some know captivity.  Some have experienced the goodness of men and some have experienced evil.  Each has lived their lives through portals of survival in struggle and success in resolve.

A Silent One may wonder as the capsule of time closes in....  'I am an unknown - what difference has it made in the universe'.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow states - The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.  Silent Ones are as the stars, invisible in the glare of the day, of who and what dominates in human universal importance.  And yet, without the glare, you become known and find out that your life has mattered and has made a difference with others within your orbit of existence.

There are a number of powerful scriptures that are assurances that you didn't happen by accident and your life is crucially important by our Creator.  I mention several here - Jeremiah 1:5  'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.....'  and Psalm 139:1-24.... 'O LORD, you have searched me and known me!  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.  You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted in all my ways.  Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.  You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.'

WELCOME BACK  as I also return to to The Turn-Up Patch for a new season with postings of fresh thoughts and photography during this new year of 2020.