Waters of Rest

I tend to write my prayers.  If I don’t, I become distracted and end up staring at birds out the window.  I have found that when I am with ‘Papa,’ even staring out the window at birds can be quite productive.  But today I wrote.  My words are in regular type, the words I believe He spoke to me are italicized.

 

(Yes.  Of course I believe He speaks in real-time!  Don’t you?)

Papa, gently your peace and perspective break in upon my soul.  Thank you for pointing me again toward the Real.  Thank you for again reminding me that soul connection and peace with You are the lasting things and will pass all understanding. 

(Here I began to sense that I should read and annotate the 23^rd Psalm.  So I did.)

The LORD is my shepherd,

I shall not (or do not) want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside quiet waters (lit. waters of rest).

Psalm 23: 1-2 (NASB)

What do “green pastures” look like to you? 

They look like a fertile place that is the natural habitat and suits the natural palate of everyone You lead to it.

It doesn’t sound like a hard or harsh or artificial place.  It is not a feedlot or stockyard where You are just fattening up Your flock on things that are not good for them (crude generalizations, religious clichés and compulsion), so that You can rush out Your ‘product’ (stout little ministers and ministries—homogenized, uniform) as fast as you can.

What about “waters of rest?”

A place of refreshing.  You lead me beside these waters.  Life-giving refreshment is always close at hand.  I can rest because I know they are near.  I do not have to be apprehensive about the water supply.

All of these things denote a pleasant place, yes, a place that is bringing forth what you need, but bringing it forth in beauty and abundance.  You have joy in this place, yes, joy because here your soul is uniting with some of its self-same fibers and delighting in the reunion.  Think wind in trees and grasses.  Think of the burbling of water.  Its sound personifies coolness.  Water is iridescent; its joy cannot be contained in one color.  It bubbles over the rocks in its path; its droplets leap up in an exuberance of Self!  This is what water is and does.  Hallelujah, Amen!

Any ‘exuberance of Self’ is soundly condemned in religious cliché.  This is a clumsy mishandling of truth that belies My power to change the dynamic of a thing.  Self, like sexuality, becomes holy when ‘baptized,’ when enjoyed according to the sanctions I have put in place.  The development and enjoyment your Very Self (talents, tastes) becomes a most holy form of worship.  It is a wordless Doxology to My Creatorship!  It is a pure praise, nothing lost in a distillation into phrase, rhyme, hymnbook and pew-back.  This organic fruit I consume fresh and whole.

The “waters of rest” aren't just about provision for needs.  They are about joy in My Presence.  Oh, the brazen Audacity of Joy!  Joy is trust.  Joy is the ‘symptom’ of your security in Me.  Have the Audacity to Joy in your joyless place (a cursed land, this realm in which you live) and you will see.  Only a curtain separates you from green pastures and waters of rest.