Up and Down Day

When I finally settled in to pray yesterday, it was a very good thing. For an hour and a half or so I paced my home, and had a conversation with Jesus. We talked about a lot of things - about dreams, about promises he's made, about the things I've been struggling with lately, about the many fronts on which I've been encountering opposition in the last several weeks. I walked away at rest - peaceful in the things He spoke to me.

It's a lot easier to rest in those things when you're not at that moment in the midst of the opposition. That's the lesson I began to learn today. Work was horrendous. By noon I was feeling equally exhausted to the way I had felt going into the weekend. I left for a few minutes to collect myself, and came back to discover an email from a very dear friend inviting me to dinner with her tonight since she was coming into the city. I think that email got me through the rest of the day - the promise of relief and enjoyment with a friend.

Time with Kari was relieving. We talked and she managed to encourage me, maybe without even trying. I went into the rest of my evening with restored peace and energy.

Funny how that goes, and how perspective can be so quickly gained and lost.

I'm working to learn to rest and live in the promises of protection that God has spoken to me both personally and through dear friends. This morning as I woke, the Lord gave me a picture of myself being clothed in a cloak, having it wrapped around my body, and then a hood pulled up over my head. The comparison that came to mind is the invisibility cloak from the Harry Potter stories. An ability to walk unseen in enemy territory. I think Kirk said something about that to me on the weekend. I went to work with that assurance, but quickly lost sight of it in the face of the opposition and tensions that have become commonplace there in the last few weeks.

So tomorrow, I'll try again. Again to rest in the promises of the armour of God, in the promise spoken to me from Genesis that He will be my shield and my reward, in the words of Psalm 91. I'll wrap the cloak of His protection around me and walk unseen in enemy territory - and this time I'll work to remember that though I can see and hear the enemy, I cannot be harmed, my peace cannot be snatched from me, the lies cannot affect me.