Invisible Love

YIKES!! Days 64-73 reading assignment
Numbers 4:1-22:20
Mark12:48-16:20
Luke 1:1-1:56
Psalm 48:1-57:11
Proverbs 10:26-11:11


Wow, it's been too many days again.  I have been traveling and sooner or later I will break down and buy a laptop.  This blog has become ingrained into my life and skipping so many writing days makes me feel all bogged down.  This time my travels have taken me yet again to places intoxicating and full of mystery...Porterville, California.  Aaaah the exotic life of the wife of a tanker pilot.  This life-style has taken me on many a romantic journey from the plains of Battle Mountain, Nevada to the smog filled skies of San Bernardino, California and many unknown stops in between.  If it doesn't have a Starbucks, I have probably been there.  Once on a fire bust in Battle Mountain, the ground fire fighters got to the one grocery store in town before me and wiped out all the chocolate inventory.  That's right, no chocolate in the whole town and no deliveries for a week.  Heaven forbid I could have lost a pound.

I went to Porterville this week to catch up with my hunka hunka burnin' love to celebrate our twenty sixth wedding anniversary.  We joke that in all the time we spend apart, we have technically only been married thirteen years.  It is an odd life-style and certainly not for everyone which is evident in the high divorce rate within this industry.  We have spent more anniversaries apart than together, so if Brent is twelve hours or less away, I try very hard to track him down.  It is our time apart that makes the majority of our time together quite precious and where we spend it is not a factor.  Spending it together is.  It's like an invisible love sometimes.  Unseen but very much our reality.  Being apart requires trust and faith in one another.  We are required to lead separate lives so much of the time and then magically transition back into a togetherness.  I am putting it mildly when I say it has been "tricky" at times.

Seventy-three days into this spiritual quest I have more questions than answers thank you very much NUMBERS chapters 1-10.  Is it disrespectful to say how painful I found those chapters?  Yet I am always anxious to get back to it.  Back to the daily-ness of reading this Bible.  The unfaithfulness and chronic complaining that annoyed me so in the beginning of Israel's journey, now I find almost comforting.  How warped is that?  Actually the Israelites are still completely annoying, but I see myself in them on so many levels now that I am relieved that God, tempted as He was, didn't just wipe them out and start over.  My humanness along with a shameful attitude of entitlement (deny as I might-I've got it) requires answers from God.  Why won't he heal my unbelief, my wavering faith.  Why won't He wave that magic wand and instill trust in Him to me?  I carry with me a bottle of mustard seed just for a daily reminder that it's all about FAITH.

In Holman's Bible Dictionary there is a page and a half of definition on faith.  It reads: faith is tied to hope in Hebrews 11:1; Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  It refers to faith as the central concept of Christianity.  It goes on to say that faith is the beginning of a relation to God and not an end.  It is especially in Paul's letters, the inauguration of incorporation "in Christ," in which one continues to grow and develop.  But here is my own conclusion....God does not owe me an explanation.  I said it before: God is God whether I believe or not, whether I understand much or little.  When I relate it to my marriage, I get it...sort of.  The wonder of invisible love.  And when I allow those tiny seeds of doubt to seep in  I am sure the enemy loves the distractions my lack of understanding offers.  The more I search for explanations the less time I am spending in quality time with Him or in prayer for others.

Brent's fire contract is up in eleven days.  For a few months we will live a daily married life.  It is the dailyness no matter how mundane and ordinary that we need.  It is the dailyness in my spiritual walk that is important as well.  The seemingly painfully boring first ten chapters of Numbers is significant information... whether I like it or not.  Who am I to critique God's own bestseller after-all?  So on with the quest.  Hit me with your best shot day 74.  For two hundred and ninety-one more days I will show up to the daily page.  Maybe even without complaining just to have a glimpse of that invisible love.

-If my eyes could see you I'd have no faith to prove-
lyrics to Invisible Love by JJ Heller