Soul Food-- Nourishing the Spirit: Part 3

As you listen to birds calling to one another, hear also My Love-call to you. 

I speak to you continually: through sights, sounds, thoughts, impressions, Scripture.

There is no limit to the variety of ways I can communicate with you. 

Your part is to be attentive to My messages, in whatever form they come.

When you set out to find me in a day, you discover that the world is vibrantly alive with My Presence.

You can find Me not only in beauty and birdcalls, but also in tragedy and faces filled with grief.

I can take the deepest sorrow and weave it into a pattern for good.

 

Search for Me and My messages, as you go through this day.  You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with your whole being (Jer. 29:13).

--Jesus Calling, July 25--

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During the 1970's we owned a house in Waveland, Mississippi, where we would take the children for a weekend, or during the summer, for a week or more.  The house was about a half-mile or so from the beach.  One day, I was returning from the beach and very conscious of the presence of God in creation.  Jesus Christ spoke to me in my heart saying, "Let me show you the world My Father made."  Suddenly, the world around me became even more alive with beauty and sound -- the colors of the bushes, the sky, the trees; the sound and movement of birds and the wind; the feel of dust between my toes and the touch of grass -- everything seemed to be moving and alive and even singing a song of praise and thanksgiving to the Creator of heaven and earth.

 

In a sense, that moment of awakening to the beauty of the world remains with me to this day.  God still speaks to me in the wind and the trees and the sky and the birds each day.  Whenever I see a blue heron standing by the water's edge, I am reminded of the poem that began this blog three years ago:

 

When no one listens

To the quiet trees,

When no one notices

The sun in the pool;

 

When no one feels

The first drop of rain,

Or sees the last star;

 

Or hails the first morning

Of a giant world

Where the peace begins

And rages end:

 

One bird sits still

Watching the work of God:

One turning leaf,

Two falling blossoms,

Ten circles upon the pond.

(Source unknown)

 

Yesterday, I wrote about Lectio Divina, not as a method of reading or of praying, but as an attitude of expectation that God wants to speak to us and as a way of listening for His Voice.  All of Scripture tells us that God will fill us with the finest of wheat, that He will pasture His sheep in green pastures and beside still waters, that He will prepare a table for us in the midst of our enemies.  When we walk with God, as did Enoch; when we sit with God, as did Deborah; when we stand with God, as did Abraham, He will surely feed our souls as well as our bodies. 

 

 Jesus taught us to pray for "our daily bread," but He also told us that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.  When we expect God to speak to us, to teach us, to lead and guide us every single day of our lives, we shall eat at the table of the Lord; in the words of the Good Shepherd: they (the sheep of His Pasture) shall go in and come out and find pasture -- or soul food.

 

More tomorrow on the Table of the Lord-- Nourishing the Spirit, Part 4.