Tuesday, October 14, Â 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Body and soul
I exchange the truth of God for a lie. I revere and worship
the creature rather than the creator,
Who is blessed forever. Amen.
Traveling took it out of me. I was having such a grand time, listening to audio books, enjoying cotton fields at harvest time in Arkansas, and relaxing on the road through Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Indiana and finally Illinois. We spent a couple of days with our family from Springfield and Champaign, along with cousins and sister from Evansville.
But on Sunday morning at our home in Urbana, I bowed out of church and slept all day, getting up only to feel the flu all through my exhausted body. I’m so grateful it lasted just a day; by Monday I felt mostly like my old self.
I guess I had a twenty-four hour (literally) flu. On Monday the aches were gone and stomach cramps had disappeared. Margaret made us a bacon and eggs breakfast which tasted wonderful, and the food didn’t seem to swirl around inside me waiting for a moment of weakness.
In the meantime Margaret tripped on the plane and bumped her knee pretty bad, and it too was recovering quickly after we get back to Urbana. In a conversation with two friends Sunday Margaret talked about the Holy Spirit’s residence inside each of us, and they prayed their prayers would reach inside and bring us healing. Thank you, Lord.
Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?
But as to what is within, give alms,
And behold, everything will be clean for you.
I think again of Bernhard Plockhorst and his angel painting on my Austin bedroom wall, always wondering with my physical mind what is going on around my spiritual body. My sister tells me this was our Aunt Mary’s favorite painting. I wonder how often she meditated on the painting in her prayer times.
When the darkness of evening comes, I love to close my eyes and just wait to see what happens next. Will I see something, or hear, or feel, or taste or smell something that isn’t quite definable? So often my prayers range from requests for friends or persecuted people groups to a simple settling into silence just to listen and wait, or just listen. When nothing seems evident to my senses, I no longer get bored or give up. I just wait a little longer.
Often still there is nothing. And that nearly ever matters. I am just thankful for this wakefulness in my body, grateful to be aware of my spirit. As I practice this attention, conversation sometimes begins and I can speak (in my English language or a prayer language) to the “unseen realm.” There’s no motive, no goal, nothing to prove. Whatever response I get might allow me to speak again. Or not.
There is a patient stillness available to me in these moments, and I begin to realize these moments are waiting for me, for whenever I will the make the time and invite.
Psalm 46:10 comes to life.
Be still and know that I am God.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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