Saturday, February 3, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Happy hour at the Dairy Queen in Waco
Solomon went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, because that was the most renowned high place. Upon its altar Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings.
On my thousand mile trips I used to stop every couple of hundred miles. I didn’t usually think of those stops as places of “soul-itude”.
Deserted place
          Find yours.
A dark place, a place of not seeing or knowing.
A place of solitude
free of anyone else’s voice,
no judgments, no expectations.
A place of soul-itude, where you are just your soul,
not your history or your choices,
not your personality, your values,
or even your memories.
Just your Being,
which is in God.
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All those other things, release to God.
Your feelings, ideas, beliefs,
even your prayers,
leave them with God.
Allow yourself to be nothing other
than that little part of The Infinite
which is You.
In that emptiness, that deserted place,
listen. Wait. Be.
Let this mystery be enough: that you are being.
The All, the Whole, is also being, with you.
God is holding you.
Like a babe in mother’s arms, just be there.
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When you’re ready for the next step,
be there for God.
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On your way out you can pick up your things.
But know this: having been in God’s hands,
they will have been changed.               By Steve Garnaas-Holmes
But maybe they were. In a way, they were for sure. Now I’m taking a kidney pill called Jardiance, and I need to pee often. I mean every hour or so. And so I stop three times as often. Each stop is a great relief. I feel gratitude, thankful, thank you Jesus! My body rushes past me, and then my spirit catches up, and regardless of the surroundings, I am at a most renowned high place.
Might seem strange, until that urgency changes everything.
Yesterday I stopped at a DQ with a 2-5 Happy Hour. It was 3 pm. First I visited the washroom and then, relaxed I asked “What do you have for Happy Hour?” I smiled at the smiling server. “Half price on anything you can sip through a straw,” and her smile got even bigger.
OK. I got a large chocolate milk shake instead of a small dipped cone. For $2.71. And I sat at a booth for half an hour or so, reading the musings of Garrison Keillor. He is also struggling with lower body problems, and he talks about them, and I identify with him.
When Jesus got out of the boat and saw the large crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them.
All those folks couldn’t fit in that DQ; it was just a small ice cream and burger store. But I thought Garrison and I were talking in a holy place, knowing God was right there. Our happy hour enriched our souls as well as our bodies.
On our way out, we said hi to the virtual presence of Steve the poet and “picked up our things.” And yes, God’s touch made them feel different in our hands.
But in an hour or so I did need to stop again, just to pee.
 (1 Kings 3, Psalm 119, John 10, Mark 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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