Prac-TEA-cing Thy Presence

Back soon---gone to prac-TEA-ce what I'm preaching (writing).

Found out that it's much easier to type "Prac-TEA-cing Thy Presence" than to actually experience it.
At home, it's quiet and my prayer chair beckons....at the beach, needs of others beckon. AND in many ways, that's a good thing. Like Richard Foster I "honestly fill thee pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all, " (Freedom of Simplicity e-book p. 347) and describing such actions as trying to live "lives of frantic faithfulness. (Ibid, p. 362)

 It's just hard to sip a cuppa with Him when my mind is elsewhere. Reali-TEA is the cuppa at hand. BUT.....

Oswald Chambers obviously realized this when he penned, "Dependent of God's Presence." (MUFHH, 7/20)
The reality of God's Presence is not dependent on any place, but only dependent upon the determination to set the Lord always before us.

Brother Lawrence certainly experience the Lord each day "among the clatter of his kitchen, while several persons ...at the same time called for different things." His heart was at focused (in great tranquility) on the Lord in the midst of the hubbub as if he were on his knees." (Practice of the Presence of God, p 26)

Taking my cuppa reali-TEA to the 2nd floor balcony---where family can join me---time with family and communion with Him.

SABBATH SNAPSHOT : historical reali-TEA

This is NOT a work of fiction. The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman is a well-written, non-fiction narrative of the horrors of WWII. Set in Warsaw Poland, the story was taken from the journals of Antonio Zabinski. Antonio and her husband, Ian, were Christian zookeepers, horrified by Nazi racism, yet able to use the Nazi's obsession of rare animals as a way of saving over 300 "doomed" Jews, during a time when even handing a thirsty Jew a cup of water was punishable by death. (p.11)
Holocaust literature, at its best, is a "tough" read but Ackerman, in this poignant story, was able to combine the scholarship of documentation of these atrocities with the kindness and daring of Christians. In an odd way, it was a celebration of life among the dying.

The audio version of the book was the right choice for me. The narrator was excellent with all the Polish names, which added to my understanding. Yet, the documentation "Details" section in the print copy were eye-opening for me!

Even amidst the starving and suffering children who compared their ills, "like old people in a sanitarium," they sang and prayed prayers of thanksgiving. 'Thank you. Merciful Lord, for having arranged to provide flowers with fragrance, glow worms with their glow, and to make the stars in the sky sparkle.' (p. 284)

Definitely not a book for everyone....but following a Friday night dessert at the Sanborn's with Viktor from Cherkassy Ukraine, I saw the frightening similarities of their situation and the ones the Poles had faced. He gave a clear  "political and spiritual climate" update from his country, and I was shocked at how it mirrored my recent reading. 

Realities of war stories are not easy reading but....needful, " lest we forget."