Happy New Year

The cry of my heart all day yesterday was, “If I stand, it is because You give me strength; if I breathe, it is because You give me breath; if I rest, it is because You give me peace. God, You are everything I need and more.”

Be encouraged. Really, be encouraged. God is with you and He is more than capable of being everything you need and then surprising you with more than you ever thought to ask for or even imagined he could or would do!

Just breathe him in and breath him out and prepare to be surprised!

The ‘Imprint’

Have you ever heard of an environmental imprint? It is the impact we make on the environment around us as we pass through. Sometimes it is called an environmental footprint. A footprint. Where one walks, one leaves an impression of their existence. At first glance, it is just a footprint. But in that one glance we process a number of things. Does it represent danger? Rabbit or wolf? One will raise your blood pressure, the other not so much. Man or woman? Running shoes or high heels? A footprint can tell us quite a bit about the owner. Likewise with an environmental imprint. The imprint might tell if the owner is selfish or generous; caring or neglectful. But have you ever thought of a spiritual footprint? What does the path look like of a person recently passed by who was filled with the Spirit of God? Do you know that Moses begged to see God’s face? Of course, God knew what Moses didn’t – that his mortal body couldn’t withstand the imprint that would be left if he did. But he did pass close by Moses and God let him look upon ‘where he had been’. The effect of simply viewing God’s imprint turned Moses’ hair white as snow! Ladies, do you know that wherever you ‘pass by’ as you go about your day, you leave an imprint of the Spirit of God? How brightly that imprint shines is up to us. Sometimes we do a very good job of hiding the fact that we hold the very Spirit of God behind imprints of self-deprecation, anger, gossip, unforgiveness, vanity and selfishness. A passerby would have to look hard and get very close to find a shimmer of the holy imprint we withold. But who wants to get that close to such a person? I beg you, let us be women who know the power of what God has gifted to us. Let us find that shimmer of love and mercy and forgiveness and build to such a glow that it just might turn people’s hair white! (Or at least turn their frowns upside down and their hearts from loss to love!)

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