Encouragement

(Just incase you don't believe me that this place is obscenely gorgeous and an absolute picture of heaven, check out this picture from a hike I took last week.  And now back to the post you were hoping to read.)

I've been emailing with one of my best friends this past week and she wrote the following; I hope it encourages you as much as it did/does for me.

Joel 2:3  Before them fire devours, behind them a flame blazes. Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste.

It just sparked my thinking about Eden and the desert. We're in the desert now, but look what God has to offer us -- the garden of Eden! Only before God can we receive blessings and look what he has to give! Otherwise, you only get sand.  Good things are to come through the Lord. The past is worthless.

I think Heaven is a lot like the Garden of Eden. A place of beauty, peace, fragrance and utter joy with being in perfect relationship with the Lord. Like your mountains, I think we get glimpses of the garden, which are glimpses of heaven.  And how it makes us long for the day when we reach it.

She's a wise cookie, that one.  I just love the thought of what good he wants for us.  And while life will not be perfect (if these past few years taught me nothing else) but it will daily give us opportunities to choose the Lord.  When we could get swept up in the world's version of success, we can choose to sit in his approval.  When the world taunts us with images of what we should look like, we have the option of choosing to believe what he says about us; that we were knit together in our mothers' wombs.

Life in this broken world will continually try to make us focus on the desert waste.  But even in the midsts of this literal desert that is Central Oregon, gosh if he doesn't heap on blessings and show us glimpses of the garden.  When we find ourselves at his feet, we will also find peace.  While the initial decision and move was hard and at times heartbreaking, being here has proven the Lord's faithfulness.  I was listening to the last week of the "follow the leader" series at Crossroads and BT talked about the idea of following.  That it often requires us to be mobile and follow where ever he leads.  I stood in the kitchen, cookie scoop in hand, with tears rolling down my face.  He called me to be obedient.  His call took me away from my family, a city I love, my friends; heck it took me 2500 miles across the country. But obedience brings peace.  Maybe not ease (although this is creepily comfortable and home-like already), but peace beyond anything I could understand or rationalize away.  Because my God, he loves faithfulness and obedience.  And I can only hope he's a little bit proud of this timid traveler.