daily java

Daily Java: Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. (Psalm 51:12).

It is 4:30AM. For some reason, I just woke up. The sleep mask I wear suddenly was constrictive and was giving me a headache. I was stopped up and having trouble breathing in it also. I laid there and tried to make it work but I finally had to get up.

I had some a dream in which we were at a visitation meeting of some kind. Mel and Miriam Eaton from Boonville, the pastors for the church there and my friends, were there. She was wearing a large plastic hat that collected dirty rainwater. I had on a pair of pants that blew air up my legs and I was thin but crippled. There were a lot of people there. No other ideas as to what was going on.

I lose my dreams quickly, for the most part. Occasionally, I will remember one vividly and come in and write it down, but it never seems to mean anything later. Very rarely has the Lord spoken to me in a dream, and even then, I am not sure he was. Some dreams seem apocalyptic to me at the time, but for the most part, they are goofy.

I miss Mel and Miriam. Mel was pastor of the church in Boonville, MO, where I attended while I was going through my credentialing process in the foursquare Church. We got to be friends and I enjoyed talking with him. I think he had never had a friend to talk to as we did, and I rarely do. Good theology and stuff discussions. It seems that when I find a friend, I always end up leaving them. Life can be annoying.

There is a joy in salvation that is not in anything else. People can see it. It is the knowledge that one is at peace with the universe. Even though bad things still happen, and they will, there is the knowledge that God will work it out in the end. It is not up to me. I have had control and screwed it up badly. God has taken it and worked it for good, and loves me at the same time.

Of course, I have to want all this, too. Without his Spirit in me, it will do no good. I can want it and he can want it, but unless we connect, there can be no working together.

I can want to be friends with someone and they can want to be friends with me, but unless we get together and become friends, it will be for nothing. There has to be the joy of friendship, but also the willing desire to not only begin the friendship, but keep it going.

Some friendships are not worth the hassle. Maybe the other person is too weird or demanding or maybe the situation is just not right for the friendship.

God gives salvation so freely and also gives the spirit of his friendship to us if we will accept it. He not only takes us to dinner, he picks up t e check. Our response: we love him and accept his friendship. Of course, it is a little more complicated than that, but that is essentially the deal.

That joy can only come through association with him. It can’t come in any other way. no other relationship on this earth can be like that one. It is, in many ways, like the relationship a husband and wife develop over years of being married and becoming not only comfortable with each other, but also dependent on each other. It is a relationship that is in no other part of life.

There is also the relationship of two old friends who have been friends for decades and are comfortable with each other. They know each other’s problems and foibles (that’s a good word) and yet are still friends. And of course, the relationship of two people who have worked together for so long that they no longer are a single person, but have become a unit, depending upon the other person in the job, whatever it may be.

All kinds of stuff comes to mind as I sit here at 4:42 AM.

I pray that God gives me no only that joy, but also that willing spirit. May his name be praised.