I scribble to live and live to scribble. I am a freelance writer, but I try not to be too seriously serious about my scratchings or myself.
Most of the world sees in prose, but my life lenses focus in poetry. It is the distillation of language and intoxicating to ingest. When I am not drinking it in, I make some feeble attempts at coughing it up.
Mark Strand, Billy Collins, and Ted Kooser have definitely gotten my rapt attention. Even Emily Dickinson in her grave has to give an approving nod to the likes of these modern poets. Pure inspiration! Poetry is a world that I tiptoe into and must pull myself away from. Like honey, too much will make you sick or crazy.
My husband and I have one daughter who loves to laugh and keeps us young. We travel internationally extensively where we find kindred and passionate hearts, delectable cuisine, beautiful oceans, mountains, and terrain, and that four- and five-star hotels abroad translate to minus four. Now that is my pampered American side speaking.
We did live abroad as educators and humanitarian aid workers for seven years and in some of the most humble settings. God graced us everyday with joy and contentment. What charges our lives is content–to give ourselves to something or someone bigger than we are. With content, we can be contented anywhere.
About this blog:
You will find slices of life from around the world here through prose, poetry, and photographs…most of the pictures are mine unless otherwise stated.
The Jewish Messiah — Yeshua in Hebrew and Jesus in English — Redeemer of all humankind, tears away the veil of blindness that keeps we who contemplate in the dark the existence of God. Everyone does. Everyone has.
When we see Yeshua or Jesus, we see that indeed He does exist. He is the very representation of God on earth. There is no one else.
He is the Light of World that shone from tiny Bethlehem and His light is still shining today through those who believe in Him and carry on His life and works on this world. We become His light to those who seek truth.
Isaiah writes:
Arise, shine: for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. . The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the shall the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended (Isaiah 60: 1-3, 19-20).
Tiny seeds of light that were first sown in the dark streets of Bethlehem village bring forth now a harvest of glory streaming from a cross that stood on Golgotha outside the gates of Jerusalem. The piercing of His human body, the bruises, the blood and water that flowed from His wounded side ignited a burning passion within His followers for a world without knowledge of Him. And the exquisite slendor of that death tree became evident in the miracle of the Yeshua rose again and conquered death. The brilliance of that light is blinding as the sun, high in the sky at noon. We can only quickly glance at it, taking in only small amounts of his glorious presence. Who among us can fix our eyes in constancy upon the magnificent light of the Messiah?
Those who sit in the darkness of human reasoning remain blind.
Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Messiah crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and utter foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ has the power of God and wisdom of God (I Corinthians 1:21).
It is the true light that came from above—the image of God in human form—as a babe, as a Lamb who offered his own blood and life as the Lamb of God, as the resurrected Messiah, who will return in the clouds of glory. Yeshua will return someday.
Just as the menorah in the Jewish temples of Moses and Solomon displayed light from a hammered gold stand according to the specification of the LORD and shone perpetually, so we who carry the light of the LORD shine His truth from earthen vessels of human frailty. We are hammered or molded into His image that His heavenly light will illuminate His perfection and purity.
This is the construction of the menorah: hammered gold,b from its base to its bowls* it was hammered; according to the pattern which the LORD had shown Moses, so he made the menorah (Numbers 8:4).
The days of my life are numbered accordingly as they have been pre-written in the Book of Life. And I am “hammered” by His hands of love into His imagine. Often a painful transformation. I yield as He yielded in the garden, alone.
Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (2 Corinthian 3:16-18).
