A matter of the heart

Breathe out a prayer, breathe in a blessing.  That's my mantra this month.  We need only ask...

I'm currently reading Frank Peretti's Piercing the Darkness.  I love a book that points out the obvious things we just don't consider on a regular basis.  This particular book highlights the importance of prayer in a slightly Sci-fi kind of way:) 
I remember reading The Shack which is somewhat controversial, but if you read between the lines, you get a great glimpse of what we humans can't grasp--that God should not be put in a box by us.  He's not the old bearded white guy we tend to imagine.  He can and will do whatever it takes to catch our attention. 
Just like Mandesa says, "...He'll do, and He'll use whatever He wants to--to tell us--I love you..."

I get really choked up by the thought that Jesus CHOSE death.  It didn't just happen.  Many of us would choose to die in our loved-one's stead.  And ALL of us are Jesus' loved ones that he CHOSE to die to spare us--so that we might live.  I think we hear it so much and read it so many times throughout our visits in church and bible studies that we tend to take it for granted.  Take a moment sometime in your near future to go to a quiet place and seriously contemplate what it must have been like for Jesus.  Imagine that one of your children or other loved one should be the one punished, but you have chosen to take the horrific death in their place. Walk your way through the beatings, humiliation, torture and finally, the last desperate breaths of life that were endured in your stead.  When you take the time to meditate on that, you can't take it for granted any longer.