During the flood, Noah and the other living creatures hid on the ark, in a safe place. Once the rain stopped and the flood began to subside, he went through a process of testing. He sent out a bird several times to see if the bird would return or if it would find a new home. This bird helped signal to him whether it was safe to open the door on the ark and let everyone out again. The other day I made a post on a private Facebook group- and received so many comments in response. There were a lot of words put out there. I don't take any of it personally, because the people responding don't know me personally (for the most part). But I do take it as a response to my generation. Sometimes I feel like I’m sending out birds. When I make a comment, or ask a question, or do something a little off the beaten path- I’m testing to see if it is safe to come out of the ark yet. And it is not only for myself that I do this. I feel like I’m testing...
Over the summer of 2018, I spent a week+ at Camp Wonderland in Wisconsin, with the Central Bible Leadership Institute. This is a conference for Salvation Army people, during which we spend time singing, praying, listening, studying together. During one of the times when we were singing, we sang a song which had lyrics about going deeper into God's love. There seem to be a whole bunch of these songs lately, somehow 'going deep' is popular. But it seems pretty scary to me- I mean, I think about deep oceans and I think about movies like the Titanic and Life of Pi where the ocean was not a friend. A few years earlier I had a vision while praying/meditating, which was about going up onto shore from the ocean of time. Time passed slowly the shallower the water got- and the more time spent in God's presence, the shallower the water became. Time could disappear completely if one were to spend all their time with God. The vision was that of a tropical island, ...