Walking With My Brother

In 2013 when I started this web blog, it was a passionate response to personal revelation of our Lord’s work in my life.

This writing. Its place here online. Its purpose. I mostly didn’t understand its value beyond its value to me. It has seemed at times self-indulgent, self-centered and I’ve walked away for long stretches from sharing here. Here’s what I wrote back then:

Walking With My Brother is a place
Where all my joy can go when it spills over and out of me.
Flowing toward what it was meant to be.
A place where it can find its own way,
Growing into what it was born to say.
With Your grace, it will find some other ones
Who need whatever it becomes.
It’s a place where all my unknowing can find a voice
Where it seeks no other choice,
But to love and serve You.
Where my human fears and failings are so exposed
That I view them without attachment,
And, with Your grace, I banish them
To wither in the catchment
Where evil submits its hold on me to You.
This place is a gift through me from You, where,
Through my joy and fear, I might plant a seed or sooth a care,
Where I might show a way or, through Your grace,
Warn off the unsuspecting from the unrighteous.
This place is for You, Holy Father.
I pray that You bless it to Your use,
And, in Your infinite wisdom,
Allow it to bless whomever You bring to this place.
That through all my joy and fear and failing
They may glimpse, if only fleetingly, Your beautiful face.
This place is a prayer.
An offering of my thanks to You for Your continual blessing;
It is my plea for forgiveness, as, in my shame and remorse,
I add daily to the burden born by Your Son at Calgary;
It is my plea still for Your guidance, Your holy direction for my life;
It is a gift, unadorned, unworthy, and yet,
My poor attempt to walk with You only and constantly,
And, if it is Your will,
To bless others, who might find their way
Through this place to You.

Yet, even in those times when I walked away from posting online, He still compelled me to write; literally to stop what I was doing and I take the time to capture His message for me, to reduce it to words.

For a while I thought of it as merely an excellent exercise for my own interior understanding and development — a way to organize my thoughts. And, if that had been all there was, the sum total and reward of my effort, well good enough.

But, it wasn’t enough for Him:

Go further. Dig deeper.
Be here with Me.
Let Me teach you. Bless you.
Be here with Me.
Hear My voice. Write down My words.
Let Me guide your hand.
Be here with Me.
Then, share what we’ve written.
Let me worry about the rest.

My own words can often be so much drivel. Still, frequently enough my Lord takes hold and gives me words so consoling. When I read them later, read of those special times when I felt His presence, I remember, and I can savor again the feelings of love and longing, awe and inspiration.

As I begin again in 2019, what I’ll post here are my prayers — my conversations with Our Lord. He is my only audience. Yet, I pray what I share here blesses you.