During this time of Lent, the Lord has led me again into the vast adventures of reading Isaiah.  It's so rich and chewy, meaty and delicious as I walk through this time of self-examination and course correction.

These scriptures are vivid prophetic paintings that still stir my heart and call me to action, and renew my hope once more for the future.  Several verses that remind me, as Tony Compolo once said, "Friday's here, but Sunday's comin'!" are the following:

Isaiah 51:11 (Amplified) "[The Lord God says] And the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing to Zion: everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.  They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. "

another verse or two that struck me anew in the Amplified version was this:

45: 2:  "I will go before you and level the mountains [to make the crooked places straight]; I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut asunder the bars of iron.

45: 3:  "And I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, Who calls you by your name!"

45: 8:  "Let fall in showers, you heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness [the pure, spiritual, heaven-born possibilities that have their foundation in the holy being of God]; let the earth open, and let them (skies and earth) sprout forth salvation, and let righteousness germinate and spring up [as plants do] together; I the Lord have created it."

Finally 43:19 "Behold! I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs forth: do you knot perceive and know it and will you not give heed to it?  I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

The thing I have given up this year for Lent is TV!  It's already been challenging to come home at the end of a long day to be greeted by the silence in my home.

Yet, the silence has called me to the scriptures and to come once again face to face with Jesus. [Coram Deo] There is a sweetness to the silence when it becomes filled with the knowledge of His Presence and a music beyond description that my spiritual ears hear when the Holy Spirit begins to sing over me.

I had forgotten.

I had forgotten in the haste of my days that there is a honeycomb dripping with His Presence and Love waiting to enrich and nourish me, even in the darkness of sitting with my sin and acknowledging my frailty and failure to achieve righteousness during this time.  O, taste and see that the Lord is good....

Once again as I "see" myself in the solitude, I am reminded that I am not alone, that He is with me, guarding, guiding all the way, He spreads a feast before me in the presence of my enemies (the forces of darkness that would accuse me and tell me I am forgotten and alone).

And, as He sings to me and once again opens the scriptures to me in a new light, I receive the vision of how He sees me, my filthy rags of righteousness replaced with His robe of white and His ring on my finger.  I am no longer the beggar, but the begotten.  No longer a slave, but an heir of the King and a partaker in the Kingdom.  I am a Princess in the Kingdom of the most High God.

As I "set my face towards Jerusalem" He goes before me because He knows the way to the Cross. And as we journey there together,  He lifts my countenance, He lifts my head. He heals my heart.

Blessings to all of you as the Lord leads us through Lent to the Cross and finally to our great Salvation and the day we will proclaim together, "HE IS RISEN!  HE IS RISEN INDEED!"

Coram Deo,
Tess