DOG-GUST

Dog-Gust It's that time of year. Just ask your local, or in my case, resident meteorologist. 

Dog days of summer are here. You don't have to ask anyone if you live in the sultry South. .....You just walk outside. Sweltering comes to mind.

Muggy Meter. Alliterative and worsening just since I took this pic.

Yet, who are we "privileged" folks to complain. We have air conditioning and access to swimming pools, if we don't have our own. We travel to the beach to enjoy ocean breezes. 

We should focus on what we do have in our relationship with Him......that goes way beyond the daily weather fluctuations even in life.

But God---He can still the storms, whether heat waves (Psalm 107:29) or calm floods of despair. (Luke 8:24) 

Think on these things on this sweltering Meditation Monday.

Pho-TEA-graphs in the mind

He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. (Psalm 107:29, NIV)

Word Pictures. Auditory to visual. Sometimes a single word or phrase evokes mental pictures. Certainly in God's word there are terms that remind us of life in all its forms. Warring. Race. Wrestling. Journey. Climb. Voyage. Storm.

Life:

• a fight or a race as Paul describes in (2 Timothy 4:7), 
• a wrestling match for Jacob, a man of never ending life struggles who wrestles with God, until God blesses Him after the "divine encounter," (Genesis 32:24-30)
• a journey as Abraham followed God's leading away from kin and kindred, (Genesis 12) 
• a climb "surefooted upon the heights" as Habakkuk 3:19 relates, 
• a voyage as Jonah in the whale's belly (Jonah 1:17)
• a storm--as the disciples experience in the stormy seas, (John 6:16-21) 

Of all the word pictures, storms and whirlwinds seem to resonate loudest with me, thus producing striking images. Storms of life agitate me---then grow. Just as the stirring waters in the ocean, can bring about ferocious storms when churned by the fierce winds.
That's when I have to call out to the One who is in the whirlwind, (Job 38:1) and recall the words of the psalmist in Psalm 89:11, "When the waves arise, Thou stillest them." His calm....deep within each human heart. An undisturbable calm available when one is in His Presence.

And no storm, however fierce or violent,
Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, inThee. ---Harriet Beecher Stowe.

A cuppa served with pho-TEA-graphs of the mind to soothe a soul.