Good morning…
On this Valentines Day 2019, I will tell you an endless love story evolving in my life.
One year at our church there was glitch in our ordering of the annual devotional books I wrote from 2006 to 2016. Our Women’s Ministry would self published these babies, after hours and hours of hard, loving labor, then we would hand them out to the women attending worship on Mother’s Day morn. The 2011 glitch was a bit costly. The publisher printed 1,000 more copies than we had requested. Needless to say, the church got tired of housing these aging beauties in the crowded bowels of our basement, so we loaded them in my trunk and, to my husband’s chagrin, they now hang out together, boxed up in our garage.
In late December, I took a box of these books down to Grayton Beach, Florida to share with the women at the Panama Beach Mission. I also placed one on the bed of my overnight houseguest, Dr. Cathy Snapp from Tallahassee, Florida. She shared her copy with her faithful mother and together they have savored God’s wisdom saturating each page. On page 9, there is a story about gradually freeing the True Self our Creator has handcrafted in our core.
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Excerpt from Touching Truth: Grasping the Grace of God by Sue Allen
Have you heard about the artist who was sculpting a swan figure from a solid block of ice? When asked how she created her masterpiece she simply replied, “I just chip away everything that is not a swan.”
I think our True Self is revealed through a similar process. Life chisels away our non-essentials to expose the core of what is really true. This True Self then stands firm, uniquely gorgeous, as a one-of-a-kind ice figure. Solid. Inspiring. Breathtaking in beauty. Before it gradually melts to water the ground upon which we sit.
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The big “I” must be found before it can be lost in God’s eternal, unconditional loving “we.”
Please pay no attention…to legends (fables, myths) and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation and meaningless arguments rather than advancing God’s program of instruction which is grounded in faith [and requires surrendering the entire self to God in absolute trust and confidence]. But the goal of our instruction is love [which springs] from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:4b-5, AMP).
…Sue…
