Life is a journey, thus the name on my blog - PONDERINGS OF A JOURNEY. I am not sure about you but I often find that my relationship with my Heavenly Father has many object lessons tided into the life I am living and the activities I am doing. For example to earn some extra money for my "apartment" fund I have been getting up at 5:30 am to pick strawberries. Look at those yummy, delicious, mouth watering strawberries. Don't they look soooooooooo good. They do now but those are the final product. Those are the strawberries you buy in the store. If you are a strawberry picker you know that not all strawberries look and taste as good as the ones in the picture. If you are the one picking the strawberries you have to come to the fields early in the morning prepared to get dirty. Picking strawberries is a dirty job. You have to kneel, or sit on the ground which first thing in the morning is muddy and wet from the morning dew. As a picker you have to carefully, but efficiently go through your row to make sure you get all the strawberries that are rip and sellable for that day. You cannot take just any old strawberry that looks okay. You have to check for soft spots, and you have to check for mold, and monkey faces (those are the strawberries that are odd shaped). So to get the nice plump juicy strawberries that you get in the stores some one has got to be willing to get dirty, and get a little sore. Did I mention that strawberry picking is very hard on your body. Man, alive am I ever sore these days.

So you may be asking what does strawberry picking have to do with my spiritual life, and my relationship with Jesus. Well if I want a relationship with Jesus that is good. The kind of relationship that goes deep and is transparent and authentic then I need to be willing to get dirty, to get down into the dirt and sort through what is good and what is bad. What is from God and what is not from God. And sometimes I am going to be really tired and really sore, and my body will ache or my heart will hurt, but that in the end will be the tools and the instruments that God use to deepen my relationship with Him. I cannot jump to the end product without the work. I cannot buy my relationship with Jesus. No more than I could buy a husband (okay I know that in some countries you can do this and even in North America you can too, but I hope you get my point. We cannot just by the end product that steals away from the sweetness of the journey. Just like I will never be able to bit into a strawberry again with savoring the flavor and know the work that went into picking that little wonderful explosions of mouth joy!!!!!

Okay so I have this picture in my office, actually I have two pictures in my office. One picture is of a lion cub and her mother and the other picture is of a baby elephant and her mother. I have intentionally used the word HER here because to me both these pictures are symbolic of my relationship with God. For now I will focus on the picture of the lion cub and her mother. No the picture to the right is not the exact picture that U have in my office, but I wanted to give you something to sort of picture. Close your eyes and try to picture this. A baby lion cub is all nestled into her mother and sleeping, tired from a day of adventure and journey. The mother lion is lying on the ground but not sleeping instead her head is held high and her eyes are open. She is on the look out to make sure that her little baby cub is protected and safe. She wants her little one to rest safe in her embrace.

For me that description is such a picture of God wow. God my Heavenly Father is holding me letting me rest, even calling me to a time of rest, and knowing that when I am rest I cannot be on guard He is on guard, protecting me and keeping a watchful eye out, so that there are no surprise attacks. God isn't just keeping a watchful eye from a distance. No He is right there holding me, sheltering me, protecting me, and ready to pick me up and carry me if need be. What an awesome picture and reminder of our ABBA's infinite and extravagant love.

WATERFALLS - Okay so my boyfriend knows that I love waterfalls. There is something so beautiful and so powerful about a waterfall. I could sit/stand for hours and just look in awe at a waterfall, so frequently he will take me to one of the local waterfalls.

Did you know that water will purify itself in a 9 foot fall, or was it 9 meters? Well anyway water will purify itself, but it must be white water and it must fall. Water that was once dirty is made clean in a fast, hard fall. When the water gets to the bottom of the fall it comes back together again and is clean purified water.

I am very much like the dirty water before it falls hard, and fast. There are times in my life when hard things happen, struggles creep up and jump on me trying to push me down. Those times are times when I am water rushing, hard and fast, over the fall. Those times are times that God will use to purify me and create me to be more like Him, if I let Him. So often I am afraid of the fall. Afraid that when the bottom comes I will be crushed into many pieces. Crushed into to many pieces to be picked back up, but that is fear speaking. The Psalmist David wrote in Psalm 18 - God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before Him. God is not so cruel that He would allow us to go through hard times and then just leave us there in pieces at the bottom. No if we lay the pieces of our broken lives at the throne of our God and Lord He will gently put them back together. He is faith to finish the work that he started. He (God) promises to finish the work that He starts. Look at a waterfall, and what happens to the water after it has rushed over the fall. At the bottom it comes together again and forms and beautiful clear lake, or stream.

So here is a challenge for all of us (myself included, because I would way rather hold onto a branch at the top than fall), when you think that God may be trying to use something to purify, and mold you, let go. Just let go, and let God do what he needs to. It might be hard and it might hurt a little, or a lot. But like the water that needs to fall hard and fast, becoming more Christ like is not easy and it means thought stuff. But in the end the tough stuff is worth it.