Winter[Summer]time with God

I'm at the 20% mark of being finished with my new book. It's coming along great! At least, I hope so. My wonderful wife gives me the most incredible encouragement. I love her so much :)

I'm also very excited about casting my bread upon the waters to see if I can get any potential publishers or agents to bite on my work and begin the publishing process. Hopefully, I will have it finished and be able to send out query letters to find someone to take my work within a month to six weeks. We'll see!

As being someone with still a semester left in college, I'm still a meteorologist. It's going to get very cold in the US starting next week if the projected Arctic air filters down from like Nunavut, Canada and the North Pole. Hopefully, we'll even get some snow here as we have yet to really get any. I'm working on my senior project also about the distribution of the size of water droplets in thunderstorms as detected by dual-polarimetric radar. Which is a boring, scientific way of say how big the raindrops are when it rains during the summertime and what it looks like on this new radar those scientists are building these days. But then the summertime is oh so romantic. I think about summer rain showers and I think about the summertime trips with my wife and her family to the Illinois River and when it would rain and we'd cuddle on the raft as we floated miles downstream. And then I start longing for those times again and I get heartsick and miss it badly and then remember that those times are a foreshadowing of what we have coming in our love affair with Jesus when he returns and we are married to him and we go on camping trips with him and raft down the Illinois River with our gorgeous Lover Jesus.



See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone! Arise and come my darling, my beautiful one, come with me - Song of Songs 2:11

One day he will say that to us. Maybe he will say that to us when we are caught up with him into the clouds in rapturous bliss. Maybe he'll say that again to us when we are here in eternity with him on earth and he wants to go to the beach for the day to enjoy life.

Beautiful God/En Gedi

Reveal Your presence,

And let the vision and Your beauty kill me,

Behold the malady

Of love is incurable

Except in Your presence and before Your face - Stanza XI, Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ, John of the Cross

How beautiful our God is! I think it's such an incredible fact of love that even though we have never seen him, we absolutely know he is gorgeous and lovely and adorable. We already know him spiritually, and we know he is wonderful and beautiful. Someone with as beautiful of a Spirit as he must be lovely. .
How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are doves...You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace... Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits. Song of Songs 4:1,9,13

Jesus is just the most incredible Person ever. He is wonderful and lovely and gorgeous. He takes my breath away and makes my heart race. He is wonderful altogether. He is a garden of delights.

You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand - Psalm 16:11

Jesus is so open and loving and vulnerable to us when we love him. He lets us come into him and enjoy him and worship him and give ourselves to him. I think it might be him calling to us in Song of Songs 4:16 to come and enjoy him and worship him:

Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.

There is no joy or pleasure or happiness greater than worshiping our Lover Jesus Christ. He is amazing and beautiful and adorable. I love how in a world of dryness, a world of desertification, we have an Oasis in the Spirit with which to refresh ourselves. Like flowers from the oasis En Gedi, so our God is oh so enjoyable to us in a world that appears more like the Sahara.

My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En Gedi. - Song of Songs 1:14 (NIV)



Just as in Psalm 63:1, Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

Writing Update/Rejoicing with God

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! For us it was a rich blend of loved family and great food :) We went to sleep at 10:30 on New Year's Eve also, lol. Meh...no big deal on that one. It's been a great time of rest with my family and I have been working hard on this new book. Hopefully, if it's God's will, I'll be able to get a publisher or agent interested in the next couple months before I graduate. We'll see!

Being alive with God means that we have intimacy with his Spirit here and that we have hope alive for what is coming:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us...we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently - Romans 8:18,22-25. NIV

I love, LOVE Romans 8. It puts everything in perspective. Better, it says that things are ok as they are now in that, yes it's okay to tell your soul to wait for its desires to be fulfilled and that you don't have to be afraid you will never get what you want in this world because you most definitely will in the next. It gives comfort. Notice that what we are really waiting on is the redemption of our bodies. And why not? Later in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says as for our bodies, they are sown natural bodies, but raised spiritual bodies. And also John says that when we are with Jesus, finally, we will be like him (1 John 3:2). We are walking spirits. We are made in God's image and he is Spirit. I love it because we will finally be the same essence in our bodies that God is. We will finally be able to touch him, hold him, embrace him. And it won't be something alien to us, but as in Romans 8, it is the redemption of our bodies. So it's not something different than what we are, it's just that we are more real as we are than ever and finally are the original image we were meant to be of our Beloved. We are flesh and bone, like Jesus after he was resurrected, but we are spiritual. It will be amazing.

So as we wait upon our Lover here and show the whole world God's love and love each other, what can we do to rejoice in him and in our hope of him? I love reading the verses in the Bible that have something like: rejoice before Yahweh your God.

Rejoice before Yahweh your God for seven days - Leviticus 23:40
Rejoice in everything you have put your hand to - Deuteronomy 12:7
And there rejoice before Yahweh your God - Deuteronomy 12:12

I think this can be part of what Jesus said in Matthew about us going into our bedroom, closing the door, and being alone with him to pray. There in our secret place with him, rejoice before him! Here we can be silly before him. Jump for joy in front of him! Scream as loud as you can to tell him how in love with him you are! Celebrate him. Just you and him. No one else has to know how silly it gets. Only rejoice in him :) It's part of our love relationship with him.



And when we finally do get to Heaven to be with him and have the redemption of our bodies, there will be some of these memories that have been made with him that he has treasured. And has stored up for us. And there he will show us how much he adores us and adored every moment we spent enjoying him and rejoicing in front of him.

At our door is every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for you, my beloved. Song of Songs 7:13