Wake up, my heart!

"Awake, my soul; awake, lute and harp; I myself will awaken the dawn." Psalm 57:8

I lay there is morning slowing realizing something was different! The heaviness had been there for so long was gone. I felt rested, it's been a while. The light through the window was just beginning its long slow ascent, but instead of the dread there was this anticipation in my soul. It pulled me up and I stepped onto the floor, my body moved easily, quicker... what was this?

Wow! Did Annie buy new coffee, the taste was exhilarating. As I walked the path towards that chapel I could feel the excited growing... what was this? The birds, I could hear them; the sounds so clear and bright.

Stepping into the Chapel, he hovered at the window, his color brilliant. It was like he had been waiting on me. This beautiful Cardinal, my friend, I could feel Him and then he whispered.

"You have been in a war a war for souls! This battle has not merely been about you but for the very lives, hearts and souls of others. The struggle has been, '.... against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.' The last twelve weeks has been intense, but the last twelve hours have been victorious."

Sweet, sweet prayer!

Surrounded, embraced... always; but now I feel it. Crazy, crazy love!

"........you endured a great struggle with sufferings: partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations, and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated; ..." Hebrews 10:32-33.

Suffering is so confusing! And there are so many voices that offer explainations for something that can't be explain with human rational. We "struggle with sufferings." We struggle to understand; to cope; to endure. And far too often we forget that is for others that we struggle, we suffer.

Simply put.... it is a spiritual war! A struggle to remove the strongholds that hold humanity in it's grip of guilt and shame. Lord have Mercy!

Mercy! Fresh and new everyday is His Mercy! The sun dances through the leaves. The air is growing warmer. The Cardinal seems to follow my footsteps on the pebbles of the path that winds through the woods. Into the day, into this human experience.

Psa. 57:8 Wake up, my heart!
Wake up, O lyre and harp!
I will wake the dawn with my song.

Go ahead and sing... sing a new song and wake up the dawn.