Shhhhhh!

Lilacs in the yard, c. 2015

"Hush. You have naught to say. Shhhh. No one cares about your little life and your little happenings. Shhhhhhhhh. You are uninteresting and unlearned. Just move along, someone else is writing to them; someone else is praying. That's it: just pray. Pray a little prayer from your unbelieving state of heart and get back to your own life. That sort of praying is enough; feeble and frail is better than nothing. Shhhhhhhhh."

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Hold yours and what will be the outcome? Life or death? To suppress the giving of yourself is to hoard. “Freely you have received, freely give.” The voice that tells you that you have nothing of note or worth to say is not that of God's.

How oft have I thought to write to a missionary wife, or a friend, a relative, or to the pastor's wife and have had my actions altered by the persistant voices in my head that tell me what I have to say will do no good, will not be interesting enough, will not be able to be maintained consistently so why start? “For who has despised the day of small things?” Zechariah 4:10.

A spring day. My thoughts scattered, racing, sprinkled with lies. Trying to sort, trying to come out from underneath the negative onslaught, knowing truth is within and is trying to be heard amongst the din. When all of a sudden a burst of a fragrance, a glorious distraction from this earthly below calling my attention to the things of the above. The scent of a lilac bush drifting delicately across the ocean of air surrounding me, engulfs my senses as a whirlpool catches up the weathered leaf. My thoughts are arrested. My God speaks. I hear. I believe. I regain my focus and put all thoughts into their place. I am the queen of my own kingdom-mind. I control my thoughts as my Saviour has supremely requested that I do: “Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

I confront the devilish accuser and tell him, “Shhhh. You have naught to say. I care not about your little life and your little thoughts. Shhhhhh. Great and mighty is He that dwells in me and therefore my life has the seeds of great and mighty to scatter about. Your evil thoughts and ways are uninteresting to me for my attention is on the Lovely and Beautiful One whose name is Everlasting and Whose nail-scarred hands outstretch past the distance from the East to the West. Hush! Just move along, defeated one, for I have things to say, to write, to pray. For others, that are as I, trapped in these earthly vessels of clay, are in need of refreshing from the cool spring of God's own Word. For the Living Fount of Life, the Well Spring from on High has touched my soul and now I must share... if even just a drop."

Even a consistent mist nourishes a land.