When you are down and just can’t seem to get up, remember what you know to do and what God can do. Remembering always gives me a different perspective and much hope. I pray remembering does the same for you.
Remember what you can do in From Pity Party to Praise and what God can do in Entertaining Angels.
Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith
Light a candle for the Holy Spirit, let His figure be the one invited person we’d hope would come, show up to cover us with His presence, illuminate our lives, giving direction, showing where we need correction and peace. We need Him here, always, stroking our lives, making us whole and holding us captive with great fear, an awe of His presence, His likeness, His coming near to us, helping us. He’s the Helper, if we let Him. He’s our guide, if we choose not to do this on our own. He’s our shield, protecting us from us and others. He’s Lord, leading us down righteous pathways, the place we belong.
He’s calling us, in whispered songs and we hear the melody floating above our heads, in our heads. We long for and like the words, but they are too simplistic to us. We want better, want more than what He sings. We bring our requests through ignoring the songs, refusing to sing the lyrics, hum the tunes in our hearts. Our dark, dry souls can’t see and are thirsty. Our candle is quenched, and we have snuffed our sight. We are not satisfied satisfying God.
This is His request: Be satisfied satisfying Me. This is the great challenge of my too often discontented soul, the strong black woman one who always wants more and so little of that has to do with God. I yearn through faithfulness and obedience, putting the spiritual above the physical, to be satisfied by satisfying God. Yearn with me. Joy with me in bringing joy to God.
Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith
When I was in college I really had that strong black woman thing going on. I was an officer and in charge of several events with my sorority, was active in my church, worked a part-time job often full-time, took a full course load and made it my business to hang out just about every weekend. I thought I could handle it all until my gums told me something different.
Yes, my gums, those things that hold your teeth, had developed a number of painful lesions that my dentist told me come from stress. That was my first lesson in the impact of poor healthcare on the body. Over the years I received more lessons battling acne, costochronditis (inflammation in the rib or cartilage), Candida (too much bad yeast) and osteoarthritis (loss of cartilage between bones in the joints, often causing them to swell). Sick of just getting chemical injections and taking medications to mask the pain I began a major search for naturopathic medicines to get to the root of my issues. I discovered a whole world of natural ways that God had for me and couldn’t believe how duped I had been into believing that only synthetic medicines could cause me relief. Like me, I know there are some of you who have believed the same thing. Well, for your information and to encourage you to start your own natural health quest, I am going to share with you over the next several Fridays a natural method that I have used that has worked for me. I am also going to feature others who have used natural methods that have worked for them.
The first and very simple change that worked for me was more rest. I have to get between seven and eight hours of sleep each night. The first time my gum lesions appeared, my dentist gave me a prescription for penicillin and told me to take it easy. The next time my gums became sore (a sign that lesions were coming), I didn’t seek medicine but rest. I do this every time and rest works.
Rest regenerates the cells. This makes my skin clearer, relieves my pain, and prevents or eliminates my lesions. And we all know that a good night’s rest clears the mind, minimizes bags and energizes the body. There will be times when we can’t get to sleep early enough to get a full night’s rest, but we have to make these times as few as possible. We have to forfeit those regular late night phone conversations, social media interactions, volunteer overtime, and that bedtime movie. These all make me feel good when I do them, but I pay for them when I’m dragging the next day. We also have to stop staying up worrying about things that we can’t change.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.—Psalm 127:2
Life is demanding enough, let alone for those of us recovering from being that unrealistic strong black woman. We need to be healthy in spirit, mind and body. God wants us this way and helps provide it for us through sleep. At the beginning of the year with all our fresh goals, let’s add getting real rest so we can be refreshed, energized and healthy to do the work we are meant to do.
Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith
With age comes wisdom, usually. This is why I love fellowshipping with the aged in my life, in my family, church and neighborhood. I have learned so much about motherhood and men, gardening and grooming, cooking and cleaning and how to seek hard after Christ. But recently when spending time with one of my aged loves, I saw how God’s wisdom can evade when worldly wisdom creeps in its place.
“When people are going through and want you to tell a lie sometimes you have to support them.” I wanted to respond to the woman who has taught me much about intelligence and integrity and who would call women out when they lied to her. I had to just listen, to search for some sort of sense in this.
She went on to tell me that her friend who has suffered several health challenges had to leave her place because she couldn’t pay the rent. Now trying to get a new lease, the woman asked my aged love to pose as her sister and say that the woman lived with her, that she has been paying her rent on time and my friend could vouch for her credit. As the story and my silence went on, the strength of my love’s voice weakened. I then asked, “Can’t you be charged with fraud if found out? Are you willing to experience that?”
We both knew things weren’t okay, that telling a lie was larger than we wanted it to be.
Even among the sage, with friends in desperate need, we can easily rely on our own devices, not thinking about where the lies may take us or where they come from:
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
Sometimes we may suspect that the wisdom of our lies is worldly (earthly) or from old wives’ tales (unspiritual), but I don’t think most of us consciously think our thoughts are demonic. I know my aged love didn’t and wanted me to approve of her selflessness to help a soul in need. I know if I think about well-intentioned lies—those white ones, those little ones, those fibbed and information-omitted ones—as demonic I’ll be less inclined to consider them, and, with hope, you will, too.
Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith
Truth in the inward parts. In the darkness of morning my husband spoke this light to me. This was his meditation before sunrise and mine today ever since he told me. He mentioned being in Ezekiel yesterday, chapter 33 about the duty of the watchman seeing truth and speaking it. These two passages, along with my pastor’s two sermons on the church at Sardis living by reputation and not in reality, have confirmed for me that we must get beyond the deception and into God’s truth.
Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.—Psalms 51:6
So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.—Ezekiel 33:7
Destroying deception takes inner work, a deep soul scrubbing to lift the crusts of latent and active lies that cover our core. This is where we learn wisdom, in the parts that others can’t see, that affect the parts that others can see. And with wisdom comes truth, and this brings God joy.
He wants us to know His wisdom. We need it for us; we need it for others, to be watchwomen for suffering souls that believed what seemed good to all the senses. The feels, tastes, smells, sights, and sounds of sin can seductively deceive and have us living in a created reality. But when we hear the truth from God we can heed His warning and shout the same to others.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
I’m counting on this.
Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith