Category: Inspirational

You know me, with an incessant need to take ideas and run with them, or in this case… fly with them!

After yesterdays prompt question, where I changed just one word, thereby altering the question to suit my style… I couldn’t get the Woodpecker out of my mind. I decided to create my own Avatar, of sorts!

I’ve decided that I like being a fluffy flyer, always looking out for the little eggs in the sandbox…

You can all start calling me Wiwohka the Wordy Woodpecker, the bird with the beautiful beak!

Folks may not enjoy all the words I keep chirping, nor the way my beak continually hammers out truths… but I sure am cute!

We’ve all been there… waking up, early in the morning, to the familiar sound of the Garbage truck pulling up outside, as realization dawns that we’ve forgotten to take the trash out!

Fortunately, I was successful in getting my trash taken out to the curb last night before bed. But I sat here listening to the familiar bang and clang of the trucks mechanisms as it collected our cans, knocking them against its side to empty them, and then carrying on its way to the next stop.

I got to pondering the relationship society has developed with our weekly trash removal system. We collect and save up all our dirty, broken or unusable things to offer up on garbage day. We plan for their regularly scheduled visit with the anticipation of a fresh start… an empty can, ready to be re-filled! Nobody wants to miss garbage day, nor do we enjoy when they take a holiday… we would be stuck with twice the trash, or possibly have to take our garbage to the local dump all by ourselves. Don’t get mad at me for saying this, but I can’t help but notice how this seems eerily similar to how we treat our relationship with God sometimes… just saying.

That familiar bang and clang will either jolt you out of bed at a run, or bring you a sense of relief… depending on where your trash is sitting. For the times that we forget to set out our cans, there’s always that moment of hopeless defeat, where we realize that we’re just not going to make it in time. Sometimes we may stubbornly make a mad dash for the curb, spilling things as we go, to attempt a chase down of the garbage truck… we know the driver can see us running after their tail lights! Maybe they’ll stop, but most likely, they won’t! For the times we find ourselves still sitting in bed silently swearing, there will be a day of the blame game, side by side with several rounds of COA and Pass the Buck… someb0dy messed up and now all we have to show for things is a bag of smelly trash that needs a new home.

It’s not the end of the world or anything, as we are comforted that the truck will return the following week… we can just hold on to it a bit longer, even if it’s smelly. Garbage service, like our relationship with God, has become so regular, we’ve become conditioned to just know that they’ll be there on time, like clockwork! Something as small as the removal of our trash, can fully bring our society to its knees! If we simply left the trash where it sat indefinitely, hoping it would go away on its own, it would only continue to smell and attract rodents.

As far as ACTUAL garbage pick-up, I hope they pay a boatload of money to all those garbage picker uppers, because without them, many neighborhoods would simply light themselves on fire, trying to burn all their garbage. You may be asking yourself how I’ve come up with such an absurd idea… because I play video games that let me shoot things and light fires, so I know myself well enough to guess how I might resolve my trash issue, that’s why! If little ole me thinks up stuff like this, then I can be assured that I won’t be alone. Let’s just be grateful for all of our garbage picker uppers… I know that I am!

As far as my relationship with God goes, holding onto my trash instead of regularly giving it to my creator to be removed and destroyed, my life just really starts to stink!

Here, have a cookie…

She does not need shoes

along the paths she travels

the sand gives way beneath her feet,

She carries on walking

with one foot in front of the other

watching for other travelers to greet…

Within her satchel

she carries a message

only meant for those who are lost,

Letting go of a life

that caused her nothing but pain

she shares love that does not come at a cost…

Flowing freely from within her heart

springs a well of Living water

fed from somewhere deep within her soul,

In a cavern once dry and barren

arose a great and mighty river

whose waters rushed in and quickly filled a hole…

If one looks within her eyes

beneath the shadow of her cloak

a great measure of understanding can be found,

She looks with compassion

toward a world that is hurting

with a grace that will forever abound…

Her place is not in the cities

violent and unforgiving

where chaos and confusion rule the day,

It’s out there in the desert

lost and wandering

where the unwanted have been broken and thrown away…

She chose this way of life

always wandering in the desert

hoping she might help the ones who are aching,

Gently sharing her words of truth

from a heart filled with love

along the journey that she and God have been taking…

As you know, I’m currently reading through the book of Deuteronomy, which is where Moses did a great amount of teaching and recapping of the Israelites journey thus far. I’ll be honest in saying, at first, it made me feel like God sure was dumping a lot of rules and responsibility on these people, as well as many, many ceremonies calling for a ton of burnt offerings. How on earth can a person travel, work and survive on a daily basis, while living in obedience to God?

Directly on the heels of this thought, came the idea of comparing todays current global, national, and local Holidays and Laws. Let me tell you that it quickly became apparent that this is a rabbit hole, or more aptly put, a vortex of surfing dogs in Hawaii!

I was blown away at the sheer number of Holidays we currently recognize, both federally, as well as globally and culturally… I eventually stopped counting. We as a society can’t seem to help ourselves from assigning some form of importance to nearly every day of the year. I realize that this is probably a gross exaggeration, but come on… now we not only celebrate Mother’s Day, Receptionist Day, Valentines Day, but let’s now add on Woman’s Day too? What gives? Have we quite satisfied ourselves with enough pats on the back? This is just a single theme of Holidays that we annually roll out the carpet for, so if I broke down all of them, we’d be here til the cows came home!

While the sheer number of recognizable holidays was sinking into my brain, I switched gears a bit, to look at the comparison of laws given by God to the ones given us, currently, by our government… I didn’t have to look, to know we have easily surpassed God’s numbers! God gave us 10… and we can’t even follow those with any form of regularity. Our government is so lazy that instead of rewriting a law that is appropriate… they just add new ones, ignoring the ones that came before, in my humble opinion.

My point is, we may have come forward by several thousand years, but our human nature is still the same… it just looks different! We read through scriptures, or any other form of history writings, feeling appalled at the things that humans did in the distant past! Are we not still doing the same terrible things, simply changing the label that’s attached to that particular sin? Considering these things, for me anyway, is both eye opening and humbling!

Wisdom and discernment are the best rule of thumb, in regards to reading the scriptures, as a whole! It is always so easy to judge others, while looking on from a place of piety, assured that we would never behave as they did in our distant past. For crying out loud, we do that with each other… forget about thousands, hundreds, or even 20 to 30 years ago… we can’t help but crucify each other every other day of the week! I pray that you notice I’ve included myself in this assessment, as I am not above sinful behavior any more than you, or the Israelites.

What I am seeing though, through all of my reading, is a faithful God working tirelessly, with our best interest in His mind! This discovering of my own nature, within the pages of the Israelites story actually brings me a great amount of comfort. When Satan tries to plant seeds of shame and/or hopelessness in my mind, I’m so grateful to be reminded of Gods journey with the Israelites. He didn’t give up on them all those many generations ago, and I am comforted with His faithful presence to us, in the here and now. As far as obeying all the stiff laws, performing the many sacrifices and Holy Holidays to be recognized, I feel like Gods list is far easier for me to align with, than all the ones we’ve tried to come up with on our own. If I’m following His laws, obeying the earthly ones becomes much easier, almost as if their not even necessary.