...a walk across the room to do figure eight's....

Keep your soul at peace.

Some time ago I found myself so worked up and distressed about something I was literally walking through my house in figure eights.  (It is possible to do that in my house!)  Much to my chagrin, I had allowed myself to get offended, troubled and distraught over a situation that left me in a weak and helpless state.  I was half way through another figure eight when God got my attention in a very real and miraculous way.  Without going into every detail of how this happened let me just say that before I sat down to allow God to intervene (and I absolutely KNEW He was going to intervene) I knew that I needed to get a book my husband reads every morning as a short devotional....a book I have never read myself and not one that he has talked to me about much, other than the occasional interesting thought.  I placed the book on my kitchen table face down because I also seemed to know that it was the last page I needed to read.  God REALLY DOES speak to us and lead us by His Spirit communicating with our spirit.  And that is how He led me to the following writing and the Scripture that is is based on.

Imagine my relief as I began to read the words of a seventeenth century writer....that our soul is the centre, habitation and kingdom of God.  Our job is to keep that place clean, quiet, void, and peaceable. Clean from guilt and defects, quiet from fears, void of sinful affections, desires, and thoughts, and peaceable in temptations and tribulations.  I have work to do in order to enter into that place of peace that is really only most comfortable when all is well between my Lord and I.  It is the most blessed state of being.  It is where I am fully satisfied.  He writes "Do not be upset or discouraged if you feel fainthearted, for He will return to quiet you that he may still stir your heart.  Because this divine Lord will fill you and rest in your soul, forming a rich throne of peace.  He does this by means of internal recollection and through his heavenly grace, so that within your own heart, you may look for silence in the tumult, solitude in the crowd, light in darkness, forgetfulness in trials, strength in weakness, courage in fear, resistance in the midst of temptation, peace in war, and quiet in tribulation."

This is the Scripture this writing is based on......

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."  Eph. 3:16-19

As I read I felt His strength coursing through my entire being.  I am at a loss for words to describe the feeling of the most incredible outpouring of God's love on me.  All I could do was sit in wonderment and gaze at this writing and thank God that this Spanish priest, Miguel de Molinos was inspired by God on a certain day in the seventeenth century to write words for me to read February 21st, 2013; a message so clearly understood, bringing peace to my soul,  they may as well have been spoken audibly that day by God Himself.

Oh the wonder of it all!